Silvia Dillard
Transcript
Katy Clune: [00:00] I had an interview the tape. This is Katy Clune and
Jeida Brooks: Jeida Brooks.
Katy Clune: And it is Saturday, May 10th, and we're at the Yancey School Community Center speaking with
Silvia Dillard: Sylvia Dillard.
Katy Clune: [00:13] Thank you, Sylvia. Would you please tell us when and where you were born?
Silvia Dillard: [00:18] I was born at UVA Hospital. I was born on December 27, 1956. And I lived in Chestnut Grove up until I was like 26, I think. And then I moved from Chestnut Grove to here.
Katy Clune: [00:38] Why did you move here?
Silvia Dillard: [00:39] Well, when I was living in Chestnut Grove, okay, it was like eight of us in the family. We lived in a three-room house, so it was like, you know. Anyway, well, so my siblings moved away. And I think I was the last one left at home. So I didn't, I got a job, was working. And the time I was living at home, I had a child, my first child, which was Quentin.
[01:06] And so I stayed there even longer. And then I met this guy. So then we had another child. Then I had a child by him. So we got a place somewhere in Chestnut Grove, but from a little walking distance from the mom's house. So we stayed there for, I think, I had another child, which is Alan. We stayed there for like six, seven years, I think. And then we moved out here to Esmont. And that's where I've been ever since.
Katy Clune: [01:35] And you had three children. How was Chestnut Grove, or how was Esmont different when you moved out here?
Silvia Dillard: [01:43] Okay. Esmont was much different because I had more room, more house room. Plus it was like when I was living in Chestnut Grove, we didn't have like plumbing, like toilet, you know, stuff like that until after I moved out.
[02:00] So it was like hard. And we didn't have, we had, we didn't have running water or anything like that. So then after I moved out here, things became a lot better because the house I moved in had plumbing, running water, toilet.
[02:16] And it was closer to get back and forth to the stores because when you was in Chestnut Grove, I didn't have a car. So I couldn't get places and stuff like that. So it's totally different and better. Yeah.
Katy Clune: [02:27] Well, did the communities feel different? Yeah. Because in Chestnut Grove, I was like, I live way back in the woods. So I didn't get to meet people or go anywhere. But when I came out here, I got to meet people.
[02:44] You know, they had parks. I mean, they didn't have parks, but they had places, you know, and you could walk and I had avenues to get back and forth to the stores and stuff like that. So, yeah.
Katy Clune: [02:55] And tell us who was, what was your family like growing up? So in that, your first Chestnut Grove house, who was there and what kind of memories do you have in that home?
Silvia Dillard: [03:06] Good memories. We fought as kids. But we had, growing up as a kid, I would never change, I would never change it because I had fun. We didn't have much, but we made up games, made, we had things to do with our time instead of just sitting around looking at TV. And we ran through the woods, built houses in the woods.
[03:28] We made, we stopped up creeks to make swimming holes. So it was good. I loved it. I loved my childhood.
Katy Clune: [03:36] What kind of inside games would you play?
Silvia Dillard: [03:39] Inside, we never was, we was never inside very much. We stayed outside. Sometimes we would stay outside until nine, until our parents would call us and tell us to come home. So we really wouldn't, we didn't stay inside that much.
[03:52] We was outside all the way, all the time. We played hide and seek. I don't know if you knew some of these games. Mama, can we go to Aunt, Grandma's? Or, there's all kinds of stories we made up. So it was nice. Yeah. Yeah.
Katy Clune: [04:08] Swimming hole sounds nice.
Silvia Dillard: Swimming hole sounds nice. Yeah. Oh, boy, we had, because that's the hole, because when we was young, we used to get baptized in that hole. But then after the church came up with water inside the church, so we just dammed it up and made a swimming hole out of it. So it was fun.
Katy Clune: [04:26] Beautiful. Yeah. Did you have grandparents or extended family living in your house when you were?
Silvia Dillard: [04:32] No, just us. My dad and my mom and my sisters and brothers. Yeah. What did your parents do for work?
[04:39] My mom, my mom was a housewife. My dad worked at Snow's Nursery. No, he worked at Blue Ridge Sanatorium for a number of years. Then he went to Snow's Nursery and another nursery, I forget what it was. Yeah.
Katy Clune: [04:56] What did he do for the nursery? Did he like help grow?
Silvia Dillard: Help grow plants and stuff like that and kept the outside clean and stuff like that.
Katy Clune: [05:03] And Snow's is still around.
Silvia Dillard:Yeah.
Katy Clune: Do you go there?
Silvia Dillard: [05:07] No, I don't. No.
Katy Clune: [05:10] What did your family do for fun?
Silvia Dillard: [05:13] Oh, oh, my goodness. During the weekday, they were at home. They'd take the house. But from Friday till Saturday night, they went to my uncle's. I think it was my uncle's.
[05:27] Uncle's house and they partied, went out, hung out with their friends and stuff like that. So, yeah.
Katy Clune: [05:33] Was there music?
Silvia Dillard: Music, dancing.
Katy Clune: [05:36] People playing or records?
Silvia Dillard: [05:38] Oh, records. Uh-huh. Yeah. So and then after I started growing up to be a teenager, then we started hanging because he used to have parties. He used to have a party every Saturday. And there was like the hang on spot. It was like down in the woods. He had the house.
[05:53] And oh, my God, it was so nice. We would stay there until one or two o'clock in the morning just partying, dancing and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah.
Katy Clune: [06:03] Sounds fun.
Silvia Dillard: It was.
Katy Clune: Any music you remember being a part of it?
Silvia Dillard: [06:08] James Brown, Al Green, all the old. That's what I listen to now.
Katy Clune: Yeah. Yeah. What about Sundays?
Silvia Dillard: [06:19] Sundays, my mom would go to church. Sometimes I would go, but mostly my mom would go to church every Sunday. And on those Sunday, we still just hung out. Went to my next door, my aunt's house down, which was down the hill from where I live. And that's it. Yeah. We rested for the week.
Katy Clune: [06:39] Was your mom involved in church a lot?
Silvia Dillard: Yeah, she was. Yeah. She...
Katy Clune: But she didn't make anyone else go with her?
Silvia Dillard: [06:47] She wanted us. Even my dad, she wanted him to go, but he didn't go until later on. That's when he started going to church. But she, yeah, she was at church school.
Katy Clune: [07:00] What about any holiday traditions?
Silvia Dillard: Well, on Christmas, it was, we had Christmas, which was real nice. Because I remember, like, we lived, the house we lived in, it wasn't very good.
[07:14] But every Christmas, we would get a new linoleum rug that they put on the floor. And we would just, like, it was in heaven. To have a new rug. But we cooked and we hung out. We had lots, you know. Easter, we had eggs, hid eggs, and hid Easter eggs and stuff like that. Yeah.
Katy Clune: [07:34] Outside?
Silvia Dillard: [07:35] Outside. Yeah. They had real eggs back there.
Katy Clune: Hard boiled, though, right?
Silvia Dillard: Yeah.
Katy Clune:Any other Easter traditions? Like, or Christmas, too, like, holiday foods that you remember?
Silvia Dillard: [07:47] Oh, yeah. Potato salad, chicken, pies, cakes, cookies, oranges. That was the time when, you know, when you had money to, you know, buy stuff, you know. But during the regular, we didn't have that. But during the holidays, they splurged, you know. They put out just to have that good holiday feeling. Yeah.
Katy Clune: [08:12] Anything in particular you'd look forward to at the holidays as a kid?
Silvia Dillard: Christmas. Yeah. Yeah. I used to, like, when I was small, I used to, like, sleep because I wanted to know who Santa Claus was. So I used to sleep up under the Christmas tree just so I could know, you know, see him when he'd come. But, all right.
Katy Clune: [08:31] Do you ever catch your parents?
Silvia Dillard: No.
Katy Clune: You just slept?
Silvia Dillard: They always made me get up and go to bed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Katy Clune: [08:41] Tell me about, like, where did the food come from? Were people growing a lot of food? Or what were the local stores that y'all went to?
Silvia Dillard: [08:49] We had a store. It was Purvis, the store that used to be out here in Esma. That's where my mom, well, first they used to shop at Purvis, and then they went up to Brow Fork after Purvis closed.
[09:02] But Purvis was the main store that everybody went to. I think the lady's name was Lucille Purvis that she owned the store. And they had, you know, tabs. And they would go there and shop. And then on payday, my dad would go in and settle up his bill and stuff. So that's what mostly they got their foods from.
[09:20] And then my uncles, I had a bunch of uncles. They had gardens. So we used to walk through the woods and go get stuff out there, gardens, or get apples. Because one of my uncles had a lot of fruit trees, apples, pears, peaches. So we used to go around there and get stuff. And yeah, that's how we made it. Yeah.
Katy Clune: [09:39] Was it often men tending to gardens more than women?
Silvia Dillard: Yeah.
Katy Clune: Oh, why was that?
Silvia Dillard: [09:45] I guess the women back in those days, they just took care of the house. I mean, most of all I seen was the ones that, you know, took care of the house. But they had the kids out there helping with the gardens. Because most of my people had kids. They had like one or two there, like five, six, seven bunches. So most of the kids was in the garden helping them with the gardens. Yeah.
Katy Clune: [10:07] How big were these gardens?
Silvia Dillard: Oh, my uncle, one of my uncles. Oh my God. He had one up where his house is. Then they had one across where his house is. Then they had one down. Like, because now he built a pond there. But he had a big garden there. And then he had apple trees, peach trees, pear trees. Oh my gosh. It was like, he had a big spread. Yeah.
Katy Clune: [10:33] Beautiful.
Silvia Dillard: It was so pretty.
Katy Clune: So then was there a lot of like putting out food for the...
Silvia Dillard: [10:40] Yeah, they canned. String beans, pears.
Katy Clune: Did you help with that?
Silvia Dillard: Not really. No. I was too busy outside of the plant.
Katy Clune: Sounds like you got off easy.
Silvia Dillard: [10:51] Until I grew up to the point where I could babysit. Because my mom, like on weekends, like from Friday, on weekends, I was one left at the house with the kids cooking or whatever, you know, while they was out having fun. So, yeah.
Katy Clune: [11:08] So, you said, I interrupted you when you were telling me things that you remember them canning.
Silvia Dillard: Mm-hmm.
Katy Clune: Would you just tell me a little bit more?
Silvia Dillard: [11:15] Yeah. Yeah. String beans, they canned squash, tomatoes, apples. What else did my mom use? Mm-hmm. I don't know. There's so much. She used to make preserves and stuff like that. Yeah.
Katy Clune: [11:34] Would you... Sorry, I'm like, obviously, I'm a gardener, so I'm interested, but do you remember as a kid, like being excited to, like, have that stuff from summer and the dead of winter?
Silvia Dillard: Yeah. Yeah.
Katy Clune: Tell me about that.
Silvia Dillard: [11:50] Because, I mean, you know, during the wintertime, you couldn't get apples, but we had apples because they canned them. And when you didn't have money to buy some of the stuff that you needed, like string beans, we had them, you know, so it was good. It was... We didn't really go hungry, you know, because we stocked up for winter. Yeah.
[12:10] And then we had this pig. We named the pig Sue, but she became a pet, but they killed her. It hurt us, but we ate her. We got hungry, we ate.
Katy Clune: How old were you then?
Silvia Dillard: [12:30] I think I was hatched up there, like, 12, maybe. We loved that pig, but the pig had to go.
Katy Clune: [12:41] Was it, was it like a, like a community, like a hog killing where people came together and held?
Silvia Dillard: Yeah, uh, yeah, because we had to stand there and watch them take that pig, put them in the skull and water, and, oh my gosh. And then watch my mom, ooh, pull her guts out.
[12:57] We had chickens, and my mom, they would kill the chickens, but I never ate a chicken off the yard. I could not. After you sit there and you watch somebody kill a chicken and pull all that stuff out, I couldn't do it. I mean, I went hungry. I ate the gravy from it, but I never ate the meat because I just couldn't see it.
Katy Clune: [13:19] But you ate Sue.
Silvia Dillard: Yeah, we ate Sue. She had better meat.
Katy Clune: [13:32] Oh man, long live Sue.
Silvia Dillard: We, I mean, we were sad for a while, but our stomach took over.
Katy Clune: [13:40] Well, like, you would, like, put, put up the pig in different ways, right?
Silvia Dillard: Yeah.
Katy Clune: [13:45] So you had it round for a long time.
Silvia Dillard: [13:46] Uh-huh, yeah, yeah. They would put it, salt it box, we had the salt it box, and they would, you know, saw it, stuff like that, yeah. The bacon, the ham. I'm sorry.
Katy Clune: [14:00] Yeah. You know, I'm glad we could say her name today.
Silvia Dillard: Yeah.
Katy Clune: [14:08] Did your children go to Yancey's school?
Silvia Dillard: Oh yeah, all my kids, Quentin, Allen, and Trina.
Katy Clune: [14:15] What was the school like when they were attending?
Silvia Dillard: That was, I mean, they had what they have now. I think they've added on a little bit more than what Trina had, when Quentin went.
[14:26] But it was, they loved it. They loved, and plus all my kids, they worked up here, because when Quentin got to be of her age, he got a summer job.
[14:35] Then when Allen got to be of her age, he had a summer job up here working during the summer.
[14:40] And Trina, I don't think she worked up here, but Quentin and Allen, yeah, they made, that was their first job.
Katy Clune: What was the job?
Silvia Dillard: [14:49] They would clean, they would wash the windows during the summer. They would just keep the school clean until time to go back to school again, so, yeah.
Katy Clune: And how were you involved, or were you involved as a parent?
Silvia Dillard: [15:00] Oh yeah, yeah.
Katy Clune: What did that look like?
Silvia Dillard: It was okay. I mean, I would get them up, pack their lunch, you know, and make sure they, you know, went up to the school and did their job and stuff.
Katy Clune: [15:11] And during the school year, was there like a parents' committee?
Silvia Dillard: [15:15] Yeah, but I wasn't, you know, really on it. I was kind of like an inward person. I was kind of like shy as far as being around people, because I never, you know, really, unless it was family, but as far as other people, I was kind of shy around people.
[15:30] So, I really didn't really hang out, like, I didn't put myself in a position to try to meet anybody. Yeah.
Katy Clune: [15:38] Well, it sounds like Chestnut Grove, which I'm not familiar with, is even more rural.
Silvia Dillard: [15:43] Right. Yeah, it is. It was. Because, like I said, like I said, where we live at, it was like, when I was, when we started, when I was going to school, it was like almost a mile from where we had to walk to catch the bus.
[15:59] And on rainy days, by the time you left my house, because we had to go through the woods, past my aunt's house, and she lived down in like a gully, and it was mud and water. So, we had to cross that, like crossing a river. And by the time we got up to the top of the road, it was like, our clothes was like dirty, soaked, mud.
[16:22] So, it was like hard, but we made it. And then the winter time, I didn't go to school that much, because I had, when I was small, I had asthma real bad.
[16:31] So, I would like, like during the summer times when I was going to school in the morning, I would get halfway up to the bus stop, and sometimes I would just pass out. And I just, I just couldn't make it.
[16:43] So, I miss a lot of days from my asthma experience when I was a child. Yeah.
Katy Clune: What was the school that you went to?
Silvia Dillard: [16:51] This one.
Katy Clune: This one? Oh, okay.
Silvia Dillard: Yeah, and I was just telling my friend that the only part that we had was, the back part, from the back to this part, we didn't have none of that.
[17:03] We just had the library, from the library, past the lunchroom, and that was it, and then going in the hall. We had nothing, that's all we had.
Katy Clune: [17:12] So, what would you do if you came to school all wet what?
Silvia Dillard: Oh, kids would laugh. I don't even want to think about that. We had to come.
[17:21] I mean, you know. But it was embarrassing. It was really, really, really embarrassing. But they didn't realize, I don't even think they knew what we went through to get up to the school bus.
[17:29] So, you know, we had a lot of, like, different kids that wasn't living like we was living, and they ridiculed us a lot. Yeah.
[17:40] Yeah, we got ridiculed a lot. Yeah.
Katy Clune: [17:43] So, I can see why the move into Esmont made a lot of things easier.
Silvia Dillard: Yeah, it did. It did. Yeah.
Katy Clune: [17:51] How has the Esmont changed since when you first moved here?
Silvia Dillard: When I first moved here, people was kind of like, they didn't want to, like, you know, be involved, you know. And they didn't try to get to know you and stuff. They didn't speak.
[18:11] You know, you'd be sitting or standing on your porch. Or you passed by and they didn't speak or anything like that. But now they got real friendly. And there's a lot more going on now since back when I first moved here.
[18:24] Yeah.
Katy Clune: [18:25] Like what?
Silvia Dillard: It was, they got the park. They got the school up here. There's gym.
[18:31] All kinds of stuff. Because when I first moved here, it was none of that. It was just, you did, found what you can do and just did it. Or either you went over to Charlottesville or whatever. Which I didn't go very much so. Yeah.
Katy Clune: [18:45] Are there any things that you learned from your parents that you still try to do in the same ways?
Silvia Dillard: [18:52] Yeah. I try to be, like, more respectful than my mom always taught us that. No matter what someone did, do to you or whatever, you always say, I love you, God bless you.
[19:06] And that's, you know, keep it going. You know, you don't try to, like, pick or argue with a person or whatever. If you disagree, you just say, okay, I love you. Go on.
[19:16] So my mom always taught me that. Yeah.
Katy Clune: [19:20] We probably could use some more of that all over the country.
Silvia Dillard: Yeah. I'm serious. You know, because she used to have running with people.
[19:29] People, because I used to watch how people used to treat her. And because my mom, I would say, she was too sweet, you know. And she just would just say, I love you. God bless you, you know. So that was it. Yeah.
Katy Clune: [19:43] Anything else you try to, like, make lessons, but also maybe, like, skills?
Silvia Dillard: [19:52] The only thing I learned from my mom as far as skills is cooking, keeping the house, and stuff like that. That's all she did.
Katy Clune: That's everything.
Silvia Dillard: Yeah.
Katy Clune: [20:00] What kind of things do you cook that are, like, how your mom would make them?
Silvia Dillard: I can make my potato salad, like my mom. I can fry my chicken and my homemade rolls. I can make, oh, my mom used to put a killing on homemade rolls. I can do that.
[20:14] Yeah, she was a cook. Yeah.
Katy Clune: Tell me about how you make your potato salad.
Silvia Dillard: [20:18] I would boil the potatoes. No, first I would peel the potatoes, and I'd cut them up in blocks myself. Boil those, and then I'd take my relish, celery seeds, salt, pepper, mayonnaise, and mix it all together.
[20:35] And then I'd take the eggs, cut them up. I'd take the yellow part of the eggs. I'd put it in a different bowl. Mash it up. Put it in, mix the mustard with it, and then I'd mix it into the potato side to make it that rue. Yeah.
Katy Clune: [20:48] That sounds good.
Silvia Dillard: Mm-hmm.
Katy Clune: What about chicken? Tell me how you make your chicken. If you're willing to share.
Silvia Dillard: [20:58] Well, I'd take my flour, my salt, pepper, and I got these spices. I got, like, the rotisserie chicken spice and the chicken rub, and I'd mix it all together. Take my chicken and just put it in a bag and shake it up.
[21:13] I used to deep fry my chicken, but I didn't like it too much, so now I just pan fry it, because I like pan fried more, because it comes out more crispier.
Katy Clune: [21:23] That sounds like you've evolved it a little bit from your mom's time. She probably didn't have Ziploc.
Silvia Dillard: Yeah, she's didn’t have that.
Katy Clune: [21:31] Was there anything else you thought you could talk about today that we haven't gotten to that you'd like to share?
Silvia Dillard: I think I've covered most all of it as far as, it's just been a great childhood. Like I said, my childhood was just really good. You know, we didn't have anything.
[21:48] We didn't, yeah, we had to tote water. We had to do, you know, get wood and stuff, but I would never change it, because we had a nice childhood.
Katy Clune: Those parties in the woods sound pretty fun.
Silvia Dillard: [22:00] Yeah, we made tree houses. We would bend trees down, put them, make huts and stuff like that, so it was good. Yeah.
Katy Clune: Do you have any questions you wanted to ask Silvia?
Jeida Brooks: [22:11] This was great.
Katy Clune: Yeah, I loved hearing about Sue.