Nancy Vaughan

Nancy Vaughan shares memories from her childhood in Murfreesboro.

"…I taught history for years and years and I would go back to my mother to ask her a lot of things and I said, I need some information on the Depression.  I said, I'm teaching this unit to my students at school and I need to know what happened in the black community during the Depression, and how did it affect you all.  How did it affect momma and how did it affect you?  Because at that time my grandfather had passed and she said, 'I don't know,' she said, 'because we were always poor.  So, how do you lose what you don't have?'  And she said, 'Understand something, we were self-sufficient because you always had some chickens running around out in the yard.  You always had a piece of ground where you could break it up and grow things.  You counted your pennies very carefully, you didn't spend unless it was absolutely necessary.  You took care of you things that you had.'  I remember…I don't know if you recall about people having screen doors on their house." 

Interviewer: I grew up with a screen door actually.

"Okay, I bet you never had it where if there was a tear that came in it, and sometimes torn places would occur because of accidents and my grandmother would cut pieces of wire and get a needle and thread and patch it.  So, you would have a screen door with two or three patches on it.  Ordinarily, today I'm sure if we have them people just toss them away, but you didn't do things like that.  You held on the what you had and you tried to preserve what you had.  You kept it in good shape.  People knew the value of money then, they really did."