Lucy Anne Lucas interview (2000-02-18)

              [Track time: 0:22:45]
CARVER LIVING NEWSPAPER PROJECT: ORAL HISTORY
Interview with Lucy Anne Lucas Interviewer Trina Davis, VCU student Date: February 18, 2000
(Interviewers questions are bolded)
What is your name?
My name is Lucy Anne Lucas.
And how long have you been living in the Carver area? Since I'm 61 years old, 61 years.
What is your occupation?
Right now I'm retired, forcibly. I'm sort of like a caretaker. Mama is 86, and if she wasn't so old I'd go find me another job someplace. It ain't no picnic sitting around here all day long, just doing housework, washing and ironing, cooking and clean up. Other than that I do babysitting in the evening for my niece, but I only have her two days one week and three days the next week. Because she works from 7 in the evening until 7 in the morning, and I ain't doing nothing so I keep the baby. Other than that, that's about the extent of what I do, except to go to church on Sunday and grocery shopping.
So how was it being born and raised in the Carver area?
Well, I was born on Norton Street, in those apartments around there. And back then, I suppose when you're poor you just don't realize it. When you're having fun, you just don't pay no mind to being poor. But as you get older and you have to go to work, you realize that you are poor. So you find ways to make changes. When I was 21 we moved up here. And I been up here ever since. The neighborhood down there where we moved out of sort of went to the dogs. Just about everybody that used to live there or was living there at the time when I was young have either died out or moved out. And most of the properties down there have been torn down. The only thing that seems to be staying up is a few private houses and rental property that's actually being done nothing with.
And when you say up here, you mean on Clay Street?
I mean right here at 1415 Clay. Actually, there are very few people here on Clay Street now that was here when we first moved here. In fact, there is nobody here on Clay Street that was here when we first got here. Because when we first moved here it was just like Norton Street. Most of the people owned the houses up here, and all of them were senior citizens when I moved up here. So they would be older than mama really, in their 90s. And its only, well he's not here anymore, he moved out last year, just one person who moved back into their family home, Mr. Moore, and he decided to purchase two other houses, so he stayed for maybe ten, 12 years, then he moved out. So there's really nobody here now who was originally here.
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You're talking about when you were young and poor you didn't realize it because of all of the things that you all did, can you talk about some of the things that you did back then? Actually, most of the things you did were go to school and play. Money wasn't a necessity, and when money is not a necessity, you don't have to think about any responsibilities. And at the time, I had an aunt and uncle that lived up the street from me, my father's sister and her husband lived up the street, so we seemed to be in and out of their house as well as our house, and at that time I think we had three or four families with children around our same age so the sidewalk was where we played the most, and that's the way the days went. You did whatever work you had to do in your house and then outside you went for the summer. In the wintertime it was a whole lot different because we lived in an apartment, you really didn't play indoors, we played in the hall because you had a whole set of steps there with a door at the bottom. So we played jack rocks in the hall in the wintertime just like we did outside in the summertime. The same way with handball if it wasn't too cold you'd go right outside your house and bounce the ball against the lady's house across the street until she hollered don't knock my stuff down no more.
So what elementary school did you attend?
Well, I started at "Elbow", they used to say "Elbow" we called it Elba over on Marshall Street, and that was across from T&E Laundry. I went there until the beginning of the 6th grade, and then we went to Carver, which was, I don't remember what year it was, but the same year I went into the 6th grade was the year they opened Carver as Carver school changed from Moore Street School to Carver School. Then I went to Carver for 6th and 7th, then down to Bingham and A. Graves for 8th and 9th grade, then back to Maggie Walker to finish, and that was the extent of school which was all sort of around in the neighborhood. I walked to Elba, I walked to Carver, I walked to Bingham and Graves, and I walked to Maggie Walker.
Okay, so how do you feel the difference in you being able to walk to school and school being so close to your home than for the student's today that have to be bussed to another neighborhood?
I think it's a bit of a hassle actually, because if you ride the school bus, you have to get up extra early. School buses run on schedules of a sort. And if you aren't there the school bus isn't going to wait for you. So you either end up missing a day's school or somebody has to carry you to school. So I think neighborhood schools had an advantage to it when you could walk to it, even being at Bingham and A. Graves. That was originally Armstrong and they changed it to Bingham and A. Graves. But even with that, walking about 12 blocks, maybe from here to Brook Avenue and Leigh, and during the time when you walked to school, you picked up others who were going from the neighborhood and everybody sort of went to school together in a group. And it gave you time to vent all your frustrations, and by the time you got to school you were ready to learn.
So you come from a fairly large family. How was that good for you?
Well, it taught you how to get along with each other. I had four brothers and four sisters. I had one sister and one brother older than I am, and everybody else was younger. I'll tell you another thing. It also showed you how to take care of them, which means you had to make them behave. But they weren't bad, I never had to fight them or anything. We got along very well together I thought.
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Did growing up in this neighborhood have an effect on your relationship compared with growing up in another neighborhood?
I don't know. My mother had a brother, her youngest was the same age as my oldest brother, and he came from Parkwood Avenue when they called it at that time the West End. They used to call it Sidney. And we were back and forward over in that area and back here. And you did get to know quite a few of the people that he knew, but I don't think just walking into a neighborhood would do anything, but I do remember one Halloween night we went over there without him and they ran us back home. But that's the same way it was with Newtowne, when you crossed Lombardy Street, or when you went to Jackson Ward across Chamberlayne Avenue. If you did not come from there, now you were not going to stay down there. Somebody was going to send you back home flying, either way. So living in this particular neighborhood did give you a closer friendship with people that you saw all the time even though you didn't have to know any of their personal business, when you saw them on the street you knew where they came from and where they were going and what they were about, so you didn't have to be afraid anything. I guess the same could be said for each neighborhood. I never lived in any other but here. And it seems like most of the people that we met seem to feel the same way. If they came from Sidney area they were more comfortable in the Sidney area. And if they came from Newtowne, they were more comfortable in Newtowne. Or even Jackson Ward. Other than that, if they invited you there, if you got to know somebody and they invited you, you were in good hands. But if you weren't invited there, you weren't exactly in good hands.
So what are some of the events in the neighborhood that you remember?
Really, the only thing that I can remember that I would call an event are the years that Moore Street Baptist Church had a recreation director. Her name was Mrs. James, I don't even remember her name. She used to set up events around the neighborhood. At the time, we had a deacon too that lived around our block. Deacon Hughes. And each 4th of July they would set up a block party, and they would have games for children, and everybody would cook the food and bring it out on the street, and it wasn't buying food at all, you simply ate it. You didn't have to buy it, everybody just donated, and everybody had fun. That in itself, even though it was only a day, is the most memorable memory I have of living around here. And when they blocked the street off, they blocked it off from Leigh to Clay. There was no people living from Clay up to Marshall anyway. On either side of the street. There was one house up there, but they were older people that lived up there, and one of the men that lived up there was blind, so I don't think they ever came down. But other than that, all the neighbors in the two block are, plus Catherine to Kinney and down to Harrison, and the people on Clay from Norton down to Harrison and some from Norton up here to Kinney. They also had table and stuff set out, so all the people in the neighborhood just really had neighborhood fun. And one other thing they used to have. At Walker School in the daytime, usually the block party started at 6 o'clock, but Walker School used to have something like a picnic up there every 4th of July on their outside field up there, up toward the church. Elizabeth Street I guess it is. And they would turn on the fire hose for kids that didn't go to the swimming pool, and they would have watermelon and hot dogs and all that good stuff up there, that was somewhere to go too on a holiday. They are the only two events that I can remember that involved the whole neighborhood and all. I think we used to go up to Walker school again, because the lady downstairs from us used to go to First Union Church that's what it was then, that was sort of like their annual event too. At that time, people would round up other people's children and carry them to events like that, especially if you could walk
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to them. Most people didn't have cars. At that time, on my block, I don't remember more than 3 people having cars on the whole block. We had two postmen that used to live across the street from us, and they both had cars, Mr. Hughes had a car, and the man next door to me, Mr. Eddie, he had a car. They were the only cars on the block. Nobody else owned a car. That was about it.
So why do you think these events stopped? Why didn't these continue?
Well, I think as people grew up and the older people died out, the younger people weren't interested in doing things like that anymore. One other thing that goes with the block party and Miss James used to have movies in the basement of Moore Street Church, and she used to charge you a dime to see them. You could come down on a Tuesday or Wednesday night, you could go around to the church and for ten cents you could see a movie for a couple hours. Keep you out of trouble. But people lost interest, it seems. The people who took over for the original people who were doing these things, they came up with different ideas, they didn't like what was going on, or they thought they could do something different, and it simply died out. That's the only thing I could say about it.
So would you like to see these events happen again?
I think it would serve to bring people together again, to make people neighbors again, you know, whereas now, you'd be surprised that a lot of the people don't even know who lives next door to them any more, or who lives across the street from them any more. Because you rarely see them. They probably go to work before you get up and when they come back in the evening they are
inside. People don't sit on the porches anymore like they used to anymore. Everybody goes to the back, and you just don't see people like you used to anymore. They tend to not be very cordial or friendly. People don't seem to be as friendly as they used to be. Because at one time you didn't even have to know a person to be friendly enough to stop and talk about the weather or the child they have with them, or ask them about their parents or something like that. But people now always seem to be in such a rush and a hurry and you just don't see them. We've got a new neighbor across the street, she's a young girl, and she's the first one that's moved into this area in a long time that even bothers to wave as she gets out of her car. She will acknowledge the fact that you are sitting on your front porch. But she don't sit on her front porch either because she has a patio out back, and I guess because she don't have time to sit and watch her son out there on the street, he plays out back. So he's sort of growing up alone. Whereas we used to come out front and play with the other kids. He's in the house watching television or out playing in the backyard.
So what are some of the changes that you've seen over the years since you've lived here all your life? Some of the drastic changes.
Well, some of the drastic changes is they finally put a sidewalk down here on Kinney Street from Norton down. That was just a dirt sidewalk. The other side is still a dirt sidewalk. But don't nobody live over on that sidewalk. That's one drastic change. The other one is all of the industry that was here has gone, for instance Friedman Marks had been over here on Marshall Street, and they had dominated the whole block from Bowe to Kinney for at least 35, 40 years, then they closed down and nothing was put there. So finally half of it was pulled down, the middle of it, and Sargeant Santa was given a place up at the corner, that portion of it, and then Habitat for Humanity took that other portion down here. That really knocked out a lot of jobs for people. Actually, when you don't have industry or something like that in your neighborhood, or in the
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outskirts of your neighborhood, or on the fringe, you don't have as many people coming through, and then the tobacco factory moved, they moved to North Carolina I believe, and that also took a lot of the people out of the neighborhood. And that stayed vacant up there for a long time, and then Rehrig took it over, and now Rehrig is gone, so when they finally finish moving it will be quiet up there again for a while. Firestone is still up there where it used to be on Broad Street, and it seems to me its been there since Broad Street been Broad Street, or since I knew it was Broad Street anyway. One other thing too, we always had a warehouse here on Broad, right there where the Siegel Center is now. That used to be the ABC warehouse at one time. That and the trains, the fact that they've taken up the railroad tracks, because I guess they don't ship by train like they used to, since that's been taken down, that took care of what was old. I can remember an ice house for as long as we had been here, and we started using the ice house in the summertime for our air condition, because if the wind blew it was going to blow cold air down our way. And they closed up and moved out. We did have two plumbing companies, Thomason and Hayjoker, they used to be across the street from each other, and they moved out also. So that would be a change from, well I think there's some type of businesses up there now but it's a change from what it used to be, that took a lot of the traffic out of the area also, which was pretty nice. Because our kids now, well, you see them out here in the summertime throwing the football, they're not small kids, they're usually teenagers, that's the biggest change I would say.
Is there anything else you would like to share, any stories or any hopes for the future with the Carver area?
Well, I would like to see all of these vacant spots up and down Clay Street at least from up here at Bowe down to Harrison filled with houses again and people living in them instead of maybe putting up something like Sander wanted to put up a yard or something up there. I'd rather see some houses up there than something like that and let them keep the businesses on the Marshall Street side. And I'd like to see Norton Street look like a place where people live again instead of an abandoned whatever. I know when I was younger, Catherine Street from Norton to Kenney had houses on it. They were.small houses but there were six or eight families that used to live there. They've cleaned that off and that's just an empty space. Something needs to go back there even if they don't put houses back there. Although it would be nice to have houses there. Something needs to be put there other than just empty fields that will eventually collect other people's garbage, because anywhere you have a vacancy people will throw garbage. So other than that, I'd just like to see the place become livable again, somewhere other than Belvidere up to Carver School, and I'd like it all the way up instead of just spot places. Other than that, that's about the only thing that I could say that I would really like to see.
Anything else you'd like to add? Oh, I don't think so, that's about it.
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