Interview with Margaret Headley, 1984 February 22 [audio](part 1)
- Early life and adoption; riding the trolleys in Wilmington, DelawareKeywords: adoption; childhood; Greenhill Church; Henry Clay (Del. : Village); Montchanin; Mt. Salem Church; orphans; Street-railroads; trolley; Wagoner's Row; Wilmington, DelawareTranscript: Headley: My name is Margaret Godfrey Headley. I was adopted by Andrew and Lucy Godfrey. Andrew was the son of Andrew Godfrey, Sr., who was a powder mill worker and drove the mule teams delivering the kegs of powder for the Company. My mother passed away with the flu epidemic in 1918, leaving me, a 3-year old orphan and that is when I was adopted by Andrew and Lucy. We lived at 16th and Woodlawn Avenue. My Uncle rode the old trolleys which passed in front of our house to the DuPont Shops near Hagley Mills.
Wagner: Give us the route of the trolley.
Headley: The trolley went on Woodlawn Avenue down to Rockford Park, turned up through the woods by the Eleutherian Mills house, on past all the machine shops and on to the end of the route was at Buck Road where it turned around and made the return trip. In the summer they were open trolleys with seats running across and the conductors walked up and down platforms on each side. This was quite a novelty which people in Wilmington dearly loved and rode them quite a bit.
Wagner: You said you took lunch out to uncle. In fact, the trolley was the way we delivered lunches and dinners to the workers at the DuPont Mills. My uncle had his lunch delivered right from his home each day. You and your cousin went together to take lunch? Cousins and my half sister, we often had a nice ride on the trolley just to deliver lunches and dinners and to go on picnics up along the Brandywine. We played along in the meadows at the end of the trolley line. There were some lovely spots up there for picnicking which I fondly remember. One uncle, Uncle Charlie, lived at Henry Clay, the home is no longer there and my grandparents lived on Wagoners Row, the last house back, which I believe is still standing. I remember the house well, can close my eyes and see the inside of the house. In fact, I have two chairs standing in my hallway right there that came out of that house.There are chairs exactly like them in the Gibbons House. Let's go back to my grandparents, Andrew and Anna Dever Godfrey. I'll always remember Grandpop, he had a goatee and was a real dignified kind of old gentleman, real Irish. Of course I only knew him after he had retired and to me, he was a wonderful gentleman and he always brought us fresh fruits and vegetables from his garden and eggs, he had chickens. I well remember the chicken yard and the garden.
And I remember a neighbor up the street, her name was Carrie Betty. I used to play in her yard, she had two dogs, I was scared to death of them. I had to go swing on that swing in her yard.
Wagner: Can you tell us about grandmom's house?
Headley: Grandmom had a plain house, very plain. The furniture, nothing upholstered, all solid wood - tables, chairs. And a cook stove of course. And a spiral stairway to the bedrooms. And the house was sort of on a little bit of a hill so you went in downstairs to the kitchen and then upstairs to the living quarters, I remember that.
Wagner: Bedrooms, second floor or first floor?
Headley: Can't remember. I remember the furniture in one room, but I can't remember anything upstairs. Wagner: You came into the kitchen as opposed to the hall.
Headley: That's about all I can remember.
Wagner: How many houses were in Wagoner's Row?
Headley: Maybe no more than five or six.
Wagner: Attached?
Headley: Each house was separate. I remember the house up at the very corner at the end of the road don't know who lived there.
Wagner: Wasn't Betty a foreman, Mr. Betty wasn't he a foreman or a farmer?
Headley: I believe so, yes, yes he worked but all the wagon drivers lived on that one little road. Then across the road it jogged and it went up into Christ Church.
Wagner: Stores, taverns along there?
Headley: The tavern and the stores were down there in Henry Clay. Trolley went right in front of the big place where there was a tavern.
Wagner: At the bottom of the hill?
Headley: M-huh. See Montchanin was a little ways up from what is down around Hagley.
Wagner: Tell us some more about Montchanin.
Headley: I had a sister, Francis, and her father was killed in one of the terrible explosions of the DuPont Powder Works, before she was born.
Wagner: Do you know a year?
Headley: About 1909, somewhere in there. It was one of the real bad explosions where so many were killed. This sister was adopted by another aunt and uncle and so we were able to grow up together and be closer than a lot of adopted children are allowed to be.
Wagner: The churches couldn't have...
Headley: Oh.
Wagner: Have any windows, glass windows?
Headley: This brings up about churches in the vicinity of Hagley, were always victims of the explosions. Mt. Salem Church that I was raised in, never could keep a stained glass window. We just went back to plain glass windows for years and years. Greenhill Church was another gathering place for the powder workers. In fact, my aunt and uncle were married there in 1910. They walked up the Kennett Pike to go to Greenhill Church to be married.
Wagner: Now, you were giving me Charlie's children.
Headley: Oh - jumps around so (laughs). One of my uncles was Charles Godfrey, he passed away at the age of 87. Worked for the DuPont Company for 45 years and his wife was one of my favorite aunts, her name was Aunt Sally and she was of the Deery family, was another powder mill family. They had three daughters which I dearly loved. One, named Margaret, we always had fun because both of our names were Margaret Godfrey and we were all good playmates. The two boys I don't remember too well, Charles and Francis. Charles is still living. And then there was an older girl, Mary. She was much older than I, never knew her very well. - Going to school in Wilmington, Delaware; stories about Headley's grandfather; going to the circus; winter diet; extended familyKeywords: 13 School; Alexis I. du Pont High School; food; potatoes; salt porkTranscript: Wagner: Where did you all go to school?
Headley: I went to 13 school, that's 17th and Union Streets which was within walking distance of where I was raised at 16th and Woodlawn. Then I went to Wilmington High.
Wagner: Old Wilmington High?
Headley: Yes, old Wilmington High.
Wagner: And you walked?
Headley: Oh yes, I also walked to 8th and Adams, the old 28th school before I went to Wilmington High. My uncle wanted me to go to Alexis du Pont School on the Kennett Pike because that was his old school, but our house was just two blocks over the line and I was not allowed to attend his old school.
Wagner: Are any of your classmates - do you still keep in touch with classmates?
Headley: Yeah, we've had reunions.
Wagner: Oh, that's nice. Do you remember any mischief you got into together?
Headley: Uh-huh on sleds. I can remember my Grandpop taking me to the circus and the old fairgrounds where Wawaset Park is now. Grandpop took me every place.
Wagner: For hikes along the Brandywine?
Headley: Yes. There was an old pavilion halfway on the trolley line. Used to ride the trolley, get off at the old pavilion and walk up to it, in the woods up there, Rockford. I think it's still standing.
Wagner: Really?
Headley: I'm not sure.
Wagner: And what did you take for lunch?
Headley: Fried chicken, hard boiled eggs, always a jug of homemade lemonade. I can remember the jugs we carried. Grandpop had to have his lemonade. I well remember the day that my dear old Grandpop lost his goatee, he was getting very ill and Auntie had quite a problem with the goatee, so she said it had to come off. "Okay, Lucy." The thing I remember best about my Grandpop, though, was something that most children do remember, their first spanking. I was being very naughty and my Aunt said she just didn't know what to do, and dear old Grandpop said, "Lucy, that child needs a whipping. Auntie said, "No, I cannot do that." He said, "Well I can." And little Margaret got her legs slapped.
Wagner: With a switch or anything?
Headley: No, just with his dear old hand. I'll never forget that.
Wagner: It did make an impression.
Headly: Yes, I'll always remember him. Oh, and my Grandpop helped to build the Panama Canal. Lost all of his hair, contracted yellow fever while he was down there, but thank the Lord, he lived to come back. But he never had any more hair.
Wagner: He was gone for how long?
Headley: Oh, I can't remember that. I remember a story he always loved to tell us about when he was driving the mule wagon at the powder. Coming down the steep hill, Rising Sun Lane, coming down, all of a sudden his wagon was ahead of his horses. It was icy and he almost wound up in the Brandywine Creek. But thank goodness he got the horses stopped and the wagon stopped and he lived through it. But that was one tale he loved to tell us.
Wagner: Oh I'll bet. Do you have any more of those to tell us.
Headley: Better shut it off (laughs).
Wagner: The circus...
Headley: In the days when I was a child, my Grandfather loved to take me to the circus parade each year which was held in downtown Wilmington. We rode the old trolley and transferred and got down to about Fourth and French Street was a good place to see the circus.
And I can remember all the wild animals in their cages that was the days when we really had a circus parade. Grandpop was just as delighted as all the kids.
Wagner: Calliope?
Headley: Oh yes.
Wagner: Get a day off from school, did the school close?
Headley: Well I can remember before I was even in school, I started school there at No. 13, was six years old.
Wagner: Tell me about the willows.
Headley: I've been asked to mention the story about how all the families peeled the branches of the willows and it was a family industry. Every child had to pitch in and help after they had their lessons done or before they went to school in the mornings, they had to do their share, because each family, I think, was paid by the number of bundles they did. That's the way I remember it.
Wagner: The children peeled?
Headley: Oh yes, the children in the family. Even my two aunts, Aunt Mame and Aunt Margaret.
Wagner: It wasn't a difficult job?
Headley: No, just tedious. And that was used in the manufacture of powder eventually. Going back to Uncle Charlie, he was one of the few remaining original powder makers in the Company when he passed away in 1960. My Uncle Andrew, who raised me, passed away in 1952 and he had 43 years service with the Company. Uncle John, of course, went to work on the railroad, Pennsylvania Railroad. Would you like me to mention all the children?
Wagner: Yes, please.
Headley: I've mentioned Uncle Charlie several times. There was Uncle John, Uncle Robert, Uncle Jim, Andrew, there were two daughters, Mary, who was always called Aunt Mame, and Margaret who became a nurse and married a doctor.
Wagner: Doctor who?
Headley: Dr. Tom Kirkwood and they went to live in Illinois. She's still living, she's 92.
Wagner: Do you hear from her?
Headley: I talk to her at Christmas on the phone.
Wagner: Still bright and alert?
Headley: Yes.
Wagner: Your winter diet...
Headley: Is it on?
Wagner: It's on.
Headley: Winter diet was nothing but salt pork and potatoes, the same old way. And maybe, on Sundays, a chicken went in the pot. Deep chest into the side of the hill with heavy wooden door and they kept eggs and some of their food in those big chests.
Wagner: They just built into the side of the hill?
Headley: Yes, right down in the kitchen.
Wagner: Not a springhouse?
Headley: No, back into the side of the hill where it would keep cool. That row of houses, I think that was called Walkers Banks, they were a solid row of houses, three stories high, lot of those houses.
Wagner: And Company housing?
Headley: Company housing, yes. That was on the other side of the creek.
Wagner: But not Wagoner's Row?
Headley: Oh no, no Wagoner's Row was way up at the end by Carpenter's estate where I told you the high wall, was where the trolley ended, end of the trolley line.
Unknown: Excuse me, I'm going upstairs and read the paper.
Wagner: Oh, all right. - Doing the laundry; bathing; weekly routine; church life; traveling between Wilmington, Delaware and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; memories of Brandywine Springs; visiting grandparents in Toughkenamon, PennsylvaniaKeywords: amusement parks; baking; Bancroft Mills; Brandywine Springs; Brandywine State Park; Deemers Beach; Flexible Flyer sled; laundry; Mt. Salem Church; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Rockford Park; Shellpot Park; sledding; Toughkenamon, Pennsylvania; trolleys; Wilmington, Delaware; Wilson LineTranscript: Unknown: I've got a den upstairs, you want to come up and see it, you're welcome.
Wagner: Thank you. We're doing laundry on Monday.
Headley: Oh definitely, things went all crooked. Old fashioned washing machine with water power when I was a little kid, and a wringer. And things had to be hung outdoors. If it was below zero even, they had to be hung out. Grandpop, Grandmom even everything had to be hung outdoors.
Wagner: Tuesday?
Headley: Usually baking and no trips to the super market in those days. Things were bought flour and sugar - in large amounts. Maybe once a month at the country stores.
Wagner: Did you get weevils in the flour?
Headley: Probably. Of course, all the people at Wagoner's Row had their own chickens.
Wagner: No wash and wear clothing?
Headley: mm-huh. And the ironing was done by heating a saddle iron on the cook stove. You usually scorched things, too.
Wagner: How often did you cook, as a child, did you do any of the cooking?
Headley: Oh yes, Auntie really taught me to cook when I was six. I used to make pancakes for this Grandpop. [pause] Oh we sled a lot in the winter. Grandpop used to...Grandpop gave me my first sled -
Wagner: What kind?
Headley: Oh a Flyer.
Wagner: Two-seater or one-seater?
Headley: Two, two people could ride it. And we sled in Rockford Park down toward Bancroft Mills, down that end of Rockford Park.
Wagner: Were the winters more snowy?
Headley: Yes, yes, and we didn't have the clothes in those days. I can remember putting on Long Johns and heavy wool stockings. Getting dressed in front of the stove.
Wagner: Saturday night baths?
Headley: Oh yes, yes. We had gas lights when I was little, on Woodlawn Avenue, no electricity for years.
Wagner: Who cleaned those chimneys?
Headley: I guess I helped.
Wagner: Now Sunday, Sunday was always a big...
Headley: Mt. Salem Church, from morning 'til night - Sunday School, church, later on choir rehearsal, I was soloist in the church choir. I had to sing at all the funerals, and then Junior League Sunday evenings at six o'clock, and Sunday night church services. Not allowed to read the funnies - the Sunday paper was not allowed in the house, sat on the porch Sunday and rocked.
Wagner: You didn't walk out with the boys?
Headley: We took lovely walks all through Rockford Park. Used to be in all of the church plays, so of course that took up a lot of my time. Clinton Brown was in charge of all the plays and I was in all of them.
Wagner: Leading roles?
Headley: Yes, and I was soloist in church.
Wagner: Any excursions on the Wilson Line?
Headley: Yes! All the time. Oh yes, Auntie and Uncle took me always on the Wilson Line. And every fall I was taken to Philadelphia for a new winter coat and we went on the old Wilson Line and we walked from the boat dock up to Gimbles, Wanamakers -and you always looked at all the coats and then went back and bought the first one you tried on. When I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old, that was a big event. We all rode the Wilson Line boats constantly.
Wagner: Where did Wilson Line go - from Wilmington to Philadelphia?
Headley: Philadelphia - and stopped at the park oh, what was the name of the park across the river? Used to have picnics over there too. And as a child, I went to Deemers Beach an awful lot on the old trolleys.
Wagner: I was going to ask you about Shellpot.
Headley: Oh, I lived there. Oh I can remember Shellpot Park so much, it was wonderful.
Wagner: How much did the trolley cost?
Headley: Oh, maybe five cents. I can remember when they tore up the tracks on Woodlawn Avenue.
Wagner: Did you have to transfer from when you left Woodlawn, get on the trolley, transfer where, to go out to Shellpot?
Headley: Like at 10th and - up and down Market Street, most every block you transferred.
Wagner: Now Deemers was pretty far away.
Headley: That was a long ride. You went in town and transferred to the old trolley that went down through New Castle.
Wagner: Now what about Brandywine State Park, what is now Brandywine Springs?
Headley: Brandywine Springs? Well, we used to ride the trolley there and then transferred to another trolley to go to my other grandparents in Toughkenamon in Pennsylvania. That's where my Mothers side, my grandparents, all lived up there and this aunt who adopted me, she always took me to Grandpop and Grandmom Bradley's house in Toughkenamon. I would go up there in the winter and go to school with my cousins and this half sister and the teacher would give me a certificate that I had attended school. And I got perfect attendance in Wilmington and we rode this old trolley car through Brandywine Springs to Kennett Square and then took another trolley from Kennett Square up to Toughkenamon, which went on through to Avondale.
Wagner: This was an all-day trip.
Headley: All-day trip.
Wagner: Wasn't there a resort at Brandywine Springs?
Headley: Oh yes, beautiful resort, they had merry-go-rounds
Wagner: Wasn't there a big hotel?
Headley: Yes, barely remember the hotel, I think it burned, I'm not sure what happened to it.
Wagner: Wasn't that a fashionable spot for everybody...
Headley: Oh yes, everybody went to Brandywine Springs, yes. And in winter, you rode in the trolley without any heat because the conductor would let the stove go out. You're really making me remember the old days. - Celebrating Christmas; celebrating Easter; memories of Breck's Mill; memories of company social functions; shopping and department stores in Wilmington, DelawareKeywords: Acme; boats; Breck's Mill; Christmas; Crosby and Hills; Easter; Farmer's market on King Street, Wilmington, Delaware; Gentieu, Pierre A., 1842-1930; Kennard's; Mt. Salem Church; Riverview Beach; shopping; Smith-Zollinger's department store; Squirrel Run; Wagoner's RowTranscript: Wagner: Let me see what else we can - what about Christmas, that's always special.
Headley: Yes, I remember a good many wonderful Christmases, my Grandpop would put up the tree, Grandpop Godfrey would put up the tree for Lucy. And lots of decorations around the house, and a party at Mt. Salem Sunday School with old Pierre Gentieu, now you've heard of Pierre Gentieu.
Wagner: Tell me about Pierre.
Headley: Well, I remember him as a dear old gentleman. This is about the son, Frank, and I knew his father, Pierre. Now he was one of the Frenchmen that worked in the powder mills.
Wagner: He was prominent out at Hagley, what was his...
Headley: Well they were very active.
Wagner: What about Easter, was that a big that's not a big thing in the ...
Headley: Just Auntie always made me new clothes and I was very busy with church and Sunday School. I became a teacher in Sunday School which I enjoyed very much working with the children - right up until I was married I taught Sunday School.
Wagner: Do you remember when they tore down the old housing in Wagoner's Row or in Squirrel Run?
Headley: No.
Wagner: Breck's Mill, you've been down to Breck's Mill.
Headley: Oh yes indeed, I know Breck's Mill very well.
Wagner: Do you remember hearing about Mr. du Pont's band?
Headley: Oh yeah, yeah, Unky used to talk about that and Chick Laird's talked about it quite a bit, but none of the Godfrey's played in the band that I know of, never heard tell.
Wagner: Did you remember any stories about the Brandywine Manufacturer's Sunday School?
Headley: Yes, yes I've heard Uncle talk a lot about going to the Sunday School, they all did.
Wagner: That's Where they got their schooling?
Headley: Right, the Sunday School, cause they worked in the mills. Unky was born in 1880 and - I don't know when.
Wagner: Do you remember any Company picnics?
Headley: No, only the boat rides, I know Aunty and Uncle went on them when I was still in school and then, of course I went to work at DuPont's in '34 and they were still having boat rides. Then the Company became too big, it was unmanageable to try to have a boat, they would have had to hire two or three boats to handle the crowd. Riverview Beach was the place I was trying to think of, we went over there.
Wagner: They had amusements?
Hwadley: Oh yes, yes, they had a what do you call it - you know the big ride where you go up the hill, and I almost got thrown out of it. Boyfriend I was with saved my life. I was going right out over the side and he grabbed me and pulled me back and smashed his glasses, cut me, but we lived through it.
Wagner: Same fella...
Headley: Nope, another boy I was going with.
Wagner: Where did you go shopping, grocery shopping?
Headley: Gosh, when I was little, we had two Acme stores out around Union Street near the school we went to, but mostly Aunty shopped at the farmers' market on King Street. Took her little basket in on Wednesdays and Saturdays and got her chickens and fish and everything on King Street. That was the shopping place and she had her hats made, all by hand, and the lady who ran you're not taping this?
Wagner: M-huh.
Headley: The hat shop was at 4th and Kings Street and it was run by a Mrs. Casper. And Mrs. Casper soon had a daughter, Vivian, and Vivian and I grew up together, and Vivian still lives in Wilmington, has a fabulous doll collection, and she just recreated her mother's hat shop in mineature it's fabulous. It's on display at the Town Hall at Christmas. And I can remember so well going to King Street market with an old fashioned market basket and riding the trolley again. But then as I got older, we had the Delaware Avenue trolley line which came out and the end of the line was at Tower Hill School and Rising Sun Lane, so we had much better transportation in and out of Wilmington to the suburbs.
Wagner: Where did you do your clothes shopping, catalog shop or did you go in town?
Headley: Aunty made everything for me until I graduated from high school. She bought all of her materials at the old Crosby and Hills and the old started with an L, the other big old department store at 4th and Market, and we bought all the materials and buttons and sewing thread- oh I wish I could remember.
Wagner: I remember Danforth's Drugstore...
Headley: Yes, 2nd and Market - what's the name of that department store at 4th? They had an elevator that I was scared to death to ride in because it was an open cage with all fancy brass and you stepped into it and the thing went up through the middle of the store, up through a hole in the floor - scared to death of it. Smith Zollinger's - Smith-Zollinger's old department store.
Wagner: At 4th?
Headley: And Market Street, and that was a big department store, and Crosby and Hills when I was growing up, everything came from...
Wagner: No Kennard's?
Headley: Not for a while, I can't remember when Kennard's - it's an old store. Danforth's was the drugstore. - Buying groceries and household goods from traveling merchants; memories of uncle who helped build the atomic bomb; hair styling and grooming; getting married at home; pets and huntingKeywords: 17th and Woodlawn, Wilmington, Delaware; Atomic Bomb; Chabey's grocery store; Delaware Avenue, Wilmington, Delaware; hunting; ice; ice house; ice wagons; machine shops; Marcel waves; marriage; Maryland Avenue; Pennsylvania Avenue, Wilmington, Delaware; permanents; weddingTranscript: Wagner: I want to ask you about...
Headley: Oh, we used to have a lot of trucks come around filled with fish.
Wagner: I was going to ask you about the ice wagon, horse drawn, or was it motorized?
Headley: It was horse drawn when I was real little, and then Unky and I used to take a little wagon and walk to Delaware Avenue, or Pennsylvania Avenue to the ice house. It's a gallery now, it's right there where the B. & amp; O. Railroad tracks cross Pennsylvania Avenue and Union.
Wagner: Is that Stuart Kingston?
Headley: And there was a huge ice house and we walked over there and got ice in a wagon, maybe twice a week in the summer. We didn't have an electric refrigerator until I was in high school I guess.
Wagner: Do you remember chipping off and crunching on the ice?
Headley: Yes.
Wagner: This is talking about neighborhood characters now, were there any...
Headley: Oh, I know, we had a lovely old grocery store, Chabey's was up at 17th and Woodlawn. Aunty used to send me up there with a quarter, get enough dried beef for dried beef and gravy for supper.
Wagner: Did you get any change from the quarter?
Headley: I don't remember, I was getting older then.
Wagner: Any characters in the neighborhood, like the neighborhood bully or anybody who teased the girls?
Headley: No.
Wagner: No characters? Did your folks work more than one job, did they work two jobs?
Headley: No, Aunty was always at home and Unky worked, as I say, up the Brandywine and then down on Maryland Avenue when they moved the shops, all the machine shops to Maryland Avenue. And he was in charge of the machine - the whole tool room when he retired. He helped build the Atomic bomb, my Uncle did.
Wagner: That would be what, 1940?
Headley: Yeah - we were married in '41, and when did they drop the atomic bomb on Japan - '44('45)?
Wagner: Early '44('45).
Headley: Well, he helped to build it in the Wilmington Shops down on Maryland Avenue. They had one - a tower they built down there in the middle of their parking lot and Uncle was their top machinist and he helped make this one little part, he didn't know what it was for until it was all over. And the day they dropped the bomb, he called me at work and he said have you heard the news? And I said, "Yes, Unky" he said, "I worked on it. He and Aunty were very, very wonderful church people at Mt. Salem Church, they supported the church and did a great deal. When Unky died, Aunty and I installed all new electric lights, chandeliers in his memory.
Wagner: What a nice thing. What about beauty parlors, did the young girls go to the beauty parlor, or did you do your beauty at home?
Headley: We shampooed our hair and set out in the back yard to get it dry when I was growing up clear up til- I had long hair in high school.
Wagner: Curlers?
Headley: Wore it in a knot. Had it bobbed a week after I got a job at DuPont's. And my boss walked back to my desk the next morning and said, "I've got about a mind to fire you." I looked at her, "What, I've just got my job." She said, "I hired you because you were the only girl that ever came in this office that had long hair, you went and got it all cut off."
Wagner: No home permanents?
Headley: No. Oh, I can remember there was a girl lived around the corner on Hamilton Street who used to give us marcel waves when we were going to proms and dances. She did it in her kitchen and she really had quite a business, all the neighborhood kids my age going to dances and parties she'd give us a marcel wave with those hot...
Wagner: Hot combs?
Headley: Burned (laughs). I can remember those so well.
Wagner: My next question here - did you go barefoot- ladies didn't go barefoot?
Headley: Just around the yard in the lawn around the house, we were allowed to in the middle of the summer.
Wagner: When you got married, big fancy wedding or...
Headley: No - married in Aunty and Uncle's house in the living room and had fourteen people, married the 14th of June. And we had bought a house, had it half furnished and came home from our honeymoon and went right to our own house.
Wagner: And right back to work.
Headley: And went back to work the next day, after our wonderful trip to California - and no children.
Wagner: You don't have any children - you have a pet, I see your nice cat.
Headley: Kitty cat's eleven years old, we have two lovely dogs out in the yard in a pen.
Wagner: What kind of dogs?
Headley: They're hunters, they're for pheasant hunting - bird dogs. Horse and cart to come down the road with fresh fish on, well you know how fresh they were probably three or four days old, iced up, but still they were glad to get them, and watch for another the butcher to come along with maybe a few scraps of beef, it was so different in those days, it's the way I try to tell people when we are exhibiting our decoys, and we show these shore birds. Well people say, "Why did they use them as decoys?" Well, I try to remind people that a man had to go out and get meat for his table. He had no super markets and so if you lived where there were birds to shoot, a man went and provided for his family that way by getting the birds, and used these to make sure that he got enough birds to bring home for a meal, it's unreal nowadays, they have everything at their fingertips- grocery stores on every corner, drugstores on every corner, never give a though what was behind the producing of...
Wagner: Fresh produce or the...
Headley: Right, never give it a thought. My grandfather worked hard to raise a garden in the summer on a...
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