When mama moved in these people house while they moved to California to work in the factories, that was the first time we live in a house that had gas and electric lights and the bathroom. Before that we had out houses to use to bath and slop jars which was some times a pail that lard was sold in, this was use so each bedroom would have it’s own to use during the night and sometimes when the weather was real bad we use it during the day and carry it to the out house to empty and wash it out with water, from the water pipe out side, where we got water in a tin bucket and sit it on a shelf in the kitchen with a dipper in it for drinking water in the kitchen. and to take a bath in a tin tub that we use to wash our clothes in, we took a bath in the tin tub once a week, on Saturday and washed up in a wash pan the rest of the week so it wouldn’t smell we took baths in the wash tub that mama washed clothes in. Sometimes my sister and I would use the same water for taking a bath and just stand up and mama would wash me and we would wash our face in the wash pan after we had washed the rest of our body, while we were in the tin tub I think that was a way of bathing for most families in those day for poor whites and poor coloreds that lived in town and were hard working people with families living from one day to the next. We would help mama carry the clothes after mama finished washing and ironing them, we put them in a paper box and some times these people that she washed and ironed for would ask her to let my sister and I to come to their houses after we got out of school and baby sit their children while the women that cooked for them was cooking supper and then they would have time to go to the beauty shop and have time to play cards with their friends. My sister and I started working for people from the time we were about ten years old, playing with peoples children afterschool that wanted to hire us. After papa died times were hard and anybody that wanted to hire her to wash and iron their clothes and us to baby sit their children did, we would eat supper at their house. There was a colored family that owned the funeral home, their last name was Hick and his wife asked mama if I could baby sit their little girl sometime when I got home from school, they lived next door to the house my mama was renting from this family that went to California to work at the shipyard during World War II. The child that she wanted me to baby sit was about three years old, she had other children but just needed me to baby sit the three year old, Shirley was her name. The house that we rented had children about the ages of my older brother Frank and my older sister Aline. The family had moved away from Hope and they didn’t have any family to live in their house so they rented it to my mama because she kept our house really clean and they knew she would take care of their house the same as the house we were already renting. Mrs. Fannie Hick’s daughter was about two or three years old and to play with her and get paid was like taking candy from a baby, because to play with her was like playing with a little sister that I didn’t have. I would comb her hair and hold her because I had never hugged any child before, I was the baby and I don’t remember my older sister or mama hugging me. My family never hugged each other and to this day I have a problem hugging another person. I never taught my children to hug me and to this day we don’t hug but I hope there is this understanding that people don’t have to hug each other to know they are loved for it to be understood that how a person treats another person is how they really feel about you as a person, it’s the way they treat one another and not about hugging and kissing, remember how our Lord was betrayed with a hug and a kiss.