|
|
| |
Miss Nettie Spencer was an elderly woman in her mid 90s when researchers recorded her oral history in 1938 as part of the Federal Writers' Project under the Depression-era Work Progress Administration.
She tells of rural life in the 1870s in the countryside near Salem, Oregon, and recalls in particular the Fourth of July festivities:
The big event of the year was the Fourth of July.
Everyone in the countryside got together on that day for the only time in the year. The new babies were shown off, and the new brides who would be exhibiting babies next year. Everyone would load their wagons with all the food they could hawl and come to town early in the morning.
On our first big Fourth at Corvallis mother made two hundred gooseberry pies. You can see what an event it was. There would be floats in the morning and the one that got the [girls?] eye was the Goddess of Liberty. She was supposed to be the most wholesome and prettiest girl in the countryside -- and if she wasn't, she had friends who thought she was.
But the rest of us weren't always in agreement on that. She rode on a hay-rack and wore a white gown. Sometimes the driver wore an Uncle Sam hat and striped pants. All along the sides of the hay-rack were little girls who represented the states of the union. The smallest was always Rhode Island.
(All this took place at Corvallis and the people from Albany used to come up river by boat.) Following the float would be the Oregon Agricultural College cadets, and some kind of a band. Sometimes there would be political effigies.
Just before lunch - and we'd always hold lunch up for an hour - some Senator or lawyer would speak. These speeches always had one pattern. First the speaker would challenge England to a fight and berate the King and say that he was a skunk. This was known as twisting the lion's tail. Then the next theme was that any one could find freedom and liberty on our shores. The speaker would invite those who were heavy laden in other lands to come to us and find peace.
The speeches were pretty fiery and by that time the men who drank got into fights and called each other Englishmen. In the afternoon we had what we called the 'plug uglies' funny floats sad clowns who took off on the political subjects of the day. There would be some music and then the families would start gathering together to go home. There were cows waiting to be milked and the stock to be fed and so there was no night life.
The Fourth was the day of the year that really counted then.
And here are other recollections of the Fourth of July in Oregon, these from the 1880s, as told by Mrs. Hortense Watkins to WPA researchers in 1938:
"I believe there was more excitement at our house on the Fourth than at Christmas..." recalls Mrs. Hortense Watkins, of who came to Portland, Oregon in 1883. "When I first came to Oregon we seemed to have just two big holidays, Christmas and Fourth of July. One and sometimes two of my daughters rode on the liberty car, and there was an uproar for days before.
Liberty cars are something we don't hear anything of nowadays, but they were mighty pretty. And instead of queens and princesses as they have for everything today, there was Columbia. She sat up on top of the [liberty?] car, and all the little States were grouped in tiers about her, each little girl in white, with a big sash down over her shoulder, showing the name of the State she represented. Columbia always had to have fair or golden hair. It didn't matter so much about the States, only they had to be pretty.
The car was a big dray, all painted and draped with bunting and decorated with flowers and greens, with the seats arranged in rows one above the other. The car was drawn by four white horses, with lots of tassels and netting to set them off. The [liberty?] car was the most important part of the parade, but the "plug uglies' -- young blades about town all rigged out in masks and fantastic costumes -- excited a lot of interest. Everybody guessing who they were. Once in a while they would get a little hoodlumish. I think that is why they were eventually ruled out.
Anyway we mothers were always rather relieved when the parade was over and our little States returned safely to us. There was always the fear of a runaway, what with the firecrackers and everything to scare a horse. We usually had some dignitary from elsewhere to deliver the oration, and at night everybody turned out to see the fireworks -- Roman candles and set pieces like the flag, George Washington, etc.
Those were great days all right. I think everybody was happier then."
These and thousands of other oral histories were taken in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project under the Work Progress Administration. This extensive collection of oral histories is preserved in the American Memory Collection of the Library of Congress.
