Earleen Allen Francis Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Earleen Allen Francis 10
Q. Were there any kind of special doings that happened around a new
baby? Did you have special people care and visit the new baby?
A. & yes, neighbors d d C~IE in to see the baby and scmeths they'd
br- a little gift, and mst of the th they did not, because everybody
wsn t able to spend a lot of mney in those days, YOU haw. Everybody
came to see the new baby.
Q. And you took it to church then and had it christened?
A. Had the baby christened? No. In the churches in those days, there
was no cbristenhg. I never knew a baby that was christened. If it ms
christened, I didn't hw anything about it. There ms no Catholic
chuxch.
Q. Is "christening" only Catholic? Is "baptising" the mrd that other
people we?
A. Well, the Baptists imrrerse, but you have to grow up. They don' t do
it to babies. The Methodists, I think "sprinkle," we call it "sprinkle."
And the Catholics they do the same things.
Q. So when the baby is born there is no church observance?
A. No. No service or anything like that. Lhen I w s in OB, I baptized
mny babies that VE thou&t trlould die.
Q. ken you look back on your early childhood, is there anything that
stands out? Particularly good, particularly bad?
A. kll, I was the first baby and I r d r that at kistmastb I got
so many toys it was pathetic. My mther had four children. The second
one, after me, passed may of pnamnia at tvm years. I don't rareher
much about her. And then my brother care along--what v m that question
again?
Q. khether anything stands out. . . .
A. No, m just writ along, day by day. I can' t wamber anything unusual.
I played with my friends, played jump the rape and that sort of thing
&m the mather permitted. In the wintertime it snmd and m'd get our
sleds out, like other children. We didn't have to ddge autamobiles and
traffic then, like w do nuw.
Q. Do p ramher nmuch about your sister's death?
A. No, I quite ping. I r d r her £uneral, because mymthr
cried so profueely. It w in our parlor, in our living roan. 'Ihey
didn't have the hral hares that ie have now. You huw, they used to
t them in the coffin and set thern in the living roan and have the
!?mer a1 right there. And then they'd take them off for burial. I remenaber
that. I just have a faint rpmffnhrance of that hral. But I can't
rwvlnhc?r a t the baby looked like in the coffin ow anything like that.
Yau do ramher faint snatches of things. In fact, I can ramber a