Archives/Special Collections, University of Illinois at Springfield

A: Really I never associated with any of them very closely.
Q: Where was their home? Was it here in Brussels also, or . . .
A: Well they lived south here. They had a farm down along the river and that's where
they were raised. I do recall we u d to visit them on the farm. i thought that was a
treat. On Sunday afternoons we'd take the team of horses and a farm wagon and go down
to their place and we thought that was something to get down and romp the farmland. Now
in those days I didn't have any farms. We got rid of ours here. We used to go down and
visit them. I can recall how there used to lx a spring near their home, no refrigeration in
those days at all, and have to have the milk and butter all cooled by spring water. And
there would be snakes around there at that particular time and I recall I'd be scared to
death of a snake. But it seemed like they didn't never bother anybody, and never - seemed
like the food always tasted so much better when we went down there to visit them.
Q: I see. (chuckles) Because it was a little bit different I guess.
A: Yes.
Q: Alright, Are there any of the uncles or aunta that you recall at all?
A: Oh yes. One of them married a doctor. Aunt Mary, she was a very vivacious
person. She lived here for quite a while. She stayed with my mother when she was here
at the hotel. And she met a doctor here who was practicing. They got married and they
- she's way up in the nineties, must be ninety-some-odd years old now. She's traveled all,
over the world. I hear from her once in a while yet. She's got several children that she
[thought] ought to become doctors too, professional people. One's a dentist, one's a doctor.
Q: Where does she live now?
A: Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Q: She really went south then.
A: Yes.
Q: Were there any others that you recall, any uncles?
A: Oh I recall Bill. He was a brother of hers, he was a . . . automobile dealer at that
time. 1 recall he had an old - the old wooden-wheeled automobile. It was when the first
cars came out, trucks rather, and then some of the newer model automobiles. He always
got a new car. And he was quite a squirt in those days.
Q: Where was his business located?
A: Well he had a tavern here in the building. He rented a building here from it - part
of this building over here and he run a saloon in it. It was called a saloon in those days,
had a saloon in the building. And I was about five, six, seven or eight years old I guess
during that period. And 1 remember a lot of instances where people would have their -
what do you call it? An old gentleman out here would come in here eveq morning with
a team of mules when I'd go to school and when I'd come home about three-thirty or four
o'clwk they'd still be tied up here to the hitching rack. And then about five o'clock he'd
get in his little buggy and the mules would go out of town at a gallop. That would happen
dmost every day invariably.
Q: Oh. (chuckles)
Carl Wittmond Memoir -- Archives/Special Collections, University of Illinois at Springfield