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Audio Recording "Oh, chores! Oh, dear God. Every day we had something to do."

"Oh, chores! Oh, dear God. Every day we had something to do."

About this Item

Title

  • "Oh, chores! Oh, dear God. Every day we had something to do."

Names

  • Vecchierella, Rose (Narrator)
  • Taylor, David Alan, 1951- (Interviewer)

Created / Published

  • 1994-08-09

Headings

  • -  Interviews
  • -  Italian Americans
  • -  Housework
  • -  Oral history
  • -  Sound recordings
  • -  Retirees
  • -  Home labor--New Jersey
  • -  Ethnography
  • -  United States -- New Jersey -- West Paterson

Genre

  • Ethnography
  • Interviews

Notes

  • -  The following is a catalog of an interview with retired garment worker Rose Vecchierella at her home in West Paterson, New Jersey.
  • -  Summary of audio segment: Doing chores when she was a youngster: "Oh, chores! Oh, dear God. Every day we had something to do. We had to chop wood, sift the ashes, bring up the coal. You know. And then, we had no heat in the house, you had to put a brick in the oven and heat it up and gowith the towel and wrap it up bring it up just to warm your bed." [telephone rings] "Wash by hand. We had to boil our clothes on the stove, coal stove. Bring in your water [and] boil your clothes. And then rinse them out in cold water because there was no heat in the house. We had it hard, I'll tell you, with seven children. Just imagine, we had four beds. Oh, dear. It was double sheets, double pillow cases. Every week that was a steady [job]. And then you had to iron on a Monday and on a Tuesday we had to, I used to bake our own bread. Buy twenty-four pounds of flour and bake our own bread. And my grandfather used to have an oven in the yard. He lived, you know, like next door to us and he built one of these old-fashioned ovens like they had in Italy. And we used to go there and bake eight or nine loavesof bread and that lasted us a whole week. A forno we called it, an oven, outside oven. It waslike a big round, you know, a dome. Then it had where you put your wood in one side and where you put your bread in another. It was nice. And then on Wednesday, we used to bake bread on Tuesday, on Wednesday I used to bake cake for my mother. Then on a Thursday wehad to iron. On Friday you'd do all your house work. And then what you didn't finish on Friday you finished on Saturday. And then we'd go out in the afternoon; go downtown and try to get a movie in or something."

Medium

  • Analog Audio Cassette

Call Number/Physical Location

  • AFC 1995/028: WIP-DT-A008

Source Collection

  • Working in Paterson Project Collection (AFC 1995/028)

Repository

  • American Folklife Center

Digital Id

Online Format

  • audio

Rights & Access

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Credit line

Working in Paterson Project collection, 1993-2002 (AFC 1995/028), American Folklife Center, Library of Congress

Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Vecchierella, Rose, and David Alan Taylor. "Oh, chores! Oh, dear God. Every day we had something to do.". -08-09, 1994. Audio. https://www.loc.gov/item/afcwip000021/.

APA citation style:

Vecchierella, R. & Taylor, D. A. (1994) "Oh, chores! Oh, dear God. Every day we had something to do.". -08-09. [Audio] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afcwip000021/.

MLA citation style:

Vecchierella, Rose, and David Alan Taylor. "Oh, chores! Oh, dear God. Every day we had something to do.". -08-09, 1994. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/afcwip000021/>.