Florence- Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Oscar Woodrow “ Woody” Stanley April 22, 2009 Florence, Alabama Conducted by Rhonda Haygood and Patti Hannah
( Also present: Lou Letson, Mac Letson)
Clip 1 of 7
Rhonda Haygood: This is Rhonda Haygood and Patti Hannah, interviewing Mr. Oscar Woodrow “ Woody” Stanley. It’s April 22, 2009. We’re at the Florence- Lauderdale Public Library, and we sure do appreciate you having this interview with us.
Oscar Stanley: Appreciate it. Glad to be here.
RH: If we could just start by asking you to give us a little bit about your early years: when, where you were born, your family, brothers and sisters. Any information like that, that you can tell us.
OS: All right. I was born in 1915, out near Old Bethel, Alabama between Old Bethel and— I call it back in the piney woods, it was on the, near the LaGrange school area and the old Bethel area. And my dad made a crop that year, two mules and some plows. He went to the bank in Leighton and borrowed fifty dollars to make a crop on till he could sell two or three bales of cotton in the fall to pay for it. And later on he decided he was going to get to town and make some better money and so he went to Chattanooga, Tennessee. We had some cousins, he had some cousins in Chattanooga, and so we, we was there. I went my first year in school at Chattanooga. And then he heard about the Wilson Dam being built so he moved back to Sheffield, Alabama and work on the Wilson Dam. Later on, when Franklin D. Roosevelt come in and established the WPA, I worked on the WPA as a timekeeper for twelve dollars a week and my dad worked as a road foreman for twenty- four dollars a week and, ah, we was happy to get it. There was just hardly any money back then. Happy to get the twelve dollars a week. And, course, he established the CC camps for the thousands of young men that was idle, nothing to do, no work. Then when he came to Sheffield in 1933, we lived at Spring Valley out from Tuscumbia and I hitch- hiked to Sheffield to see him. And he soon got the WPA going and the CC camps and TVA and, and other things. I wrote a letter this week I was going to mail to the Times Daily on proposing a remembrance day for FDR, not his birthday, but day of remembrance. I call it Franklin D- Day. I meant to bring a copy of it, and come off without it. But, ah, anyway, finally we moved back out in the country and then 19 and, about 1924, my dad had a Model T Ford and I learned to drive it. He’d, before he’d get up every morning, he’d be asleep and you could take a knife blade and turn the switch on, and I’d, it had three pedals, one to go forward and one to back up and one to stop. And I’d push the forward pedal and go about fifty feet, and then push the back- up pedal, go about fifty feet and finally I got to where I’d drive all around the house and it wasn’t too long till I could drive a T Model better than anybody. There was a lady by the name of Ernestine Bradford that lived about, about a mile from us and she told people back then that I could turn a T Model around on a dime and have a nickel left.
RH: Where did you live, ah, when you were little, when you were over in Tuscumbia? Did you live in a, in a, in a house over there? On a farm? In a neighborhood?
OS: Oh, and when we lived in Tuscumbia we lived in a rented a house. And then we moved from the farm house, and we, when my dad moved out of there and started farming, you know. But during the Depression, we moved to a twelve- dollar- a- month rented house at Spring Valley Station, plank, what is it they call it, a clapboard house. Twelve dollars a month, and I don’t know where he got the twelve dollars.
RH: Wow. How many of you were there?
OS: Well, ah, my brother Roy was about seven years older than me and he, he was working at Barfield’s Garage in Tuscumbia for fifteen dollars a week, and he lived in Tuscumbia. But it was my mother, and my dad, and my brother Malcolm, which was, he was about six years younger than me. One night during the Depression, we had a tall can of Pet milk, poured in a half a gallon fruit jar, finished filling it with water, and a pone of corn bread that fed the four of us. And the next night we had a nickel pack of crackers, which was a pretty good little pack of crackers then and, a can of mackerel. That was our food. There was some tough times, then, I’m telling you. But when Franklin D. got in and got the WPA going, and I got twelve dollars a week, I was in big money.
