Cecil A. Partee Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

when prohibition was over and they had the three-point-two beer and something
like that. Not many discussions about liquor, I don't remember much. We
never had a lot of liquor in my house. My daddy would make grape wine and
blackberry wine. They would have it for ceremonial things, like Christmas
when people would have cake and wine or something. But very little drinking
was in the home.
Q: So, you don't recall your father's position on prohibition, then?
A: No, I do not.
Q: Living in an agricultural community, did you work much on the farms, out
surrounding . . .
A: &, yes, there were some summers I spent with farm families when my mother
would go away to college for the summer. I would spend the summer with a farm
family and worked on the farm with them, sure.
Q: Was this the same family more than one summer?
A: Yes, Mr. and Mrs. Sebastian, who were a nice family. I stayed with themi
couple of summers.
Q: Were they black or white?
A: They were black, but they owned their own farm.
Q: How large a farm was it?
A: About a hundred and sixty acres.
Q: How old were you at this time?
A: You know, I guess maybe . . . eleven, twelve, thirteen, something like that.
Q: Did you learn to drive the horses in the field? Or that type work?
A: No. No, I wasn't big enough to fool with the horses, they used mules,
anyway. I wasn't large enough to handle a horse or mule.
Q: What type of work did you do on the farm, then?
A: The chores. You know, feed the chickens, slop the hogs, bring in firewood.
Various kinds of chores like that which were just peripheral to actual farm
life, was just a part of it. I chopped cotton and that kind of thing. Carried
water to the field hands and that kind of thing.
Q: Did you help with the milking?
A: Never helped with the milking, no.
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