Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Full Transcript as transcribed by Kasey McRae:
Phone interview- March 15, 2009 Lake City, Fl.
Interviewer- Kasey McRae, Brigham Young University
Interviewee- Foy May-Daffner Durrance Andrus
Born: September 7, 1926
Relation: Great-Aunt
Foy Andrus shares her experiences with changing media throughout her lifetime. She recounts how she has consumed and worked with different media as it developed and transformed into what we know today. She also gives experiences from her life that stood out and that have made impressions on her.
Kasey McRae: What’s your full name?
Foy Andrus: Uh-oh, (laughs) Foy… May…Daffner, D-a-f-f-n-e-r, May-Daffner that’s one word, uh… Durrance Andrus I guess.
KM: Okay, and when’s your birthday?
FA: September 7th 1926…yeah, figure that out.
KM: (laughs) I won’t do any math.
FA: (laughs)
KM: Okay so I guess my first question would be…now I was talking to Mama Jean [my grandmother- Foy’s sister] and she said you worked for Southern Bell.
FA: Yes…
KM: What did you do for them?
FA: Um, I was a Telephone Operator. A long distance Telephone Operator and we wore those headphones.
KM: (laughs)
FA: I guess you call them headphones…
KM: Okay, when was that? How old were you?
FA: I was, lets see… trying to figure that out… I think I was eighteen.
KM: Eighteen?
FA: Um-hmm… because I was working there when I met Andy. [Foy’s late husband]
KM: How did ya’ll meet?
FA: (laughs) You don’t want to hear the whole story do you?
KM: For sure! Of course I do!
FA: Um, he was dating my cousin and I met him but they were just dating they weren’t serious about each other and later on I met him at a drug store in Lake City [FL] and we just made a date and we started dating.
KM: Well, okay so then, now Mama Jean told me a little bit. She said that shortly after ya’ll met and got married you moved to Hawaii and what-not…
FA: Yeah, that was in…’46. It was right after the um… the war ended in Japan. The atomic bomb was dropped over Japan, the cities. And uh, I left, well the war was over, and I left, uh, I think it was January so it would be January ’46 I think.
KM: So during the war and stuff…
FA: Well now this was 64 years ago.
KM: (laughs) No you’re fine.
FA: (laughs) Okay, go ahead.
KM: Um, so during the war and stuff, like now, today, when you want to hear news about the war and everything, you just turn on the TV. So how did you find out news about the war and everything back then?
FA: Um, radio.
KM: Radio... Did you, because I know Uncle Andy was in the Navy and everything, did you ever find out stuff before other people or anything?
FA: No… I don’t… I don’t think so…
KM: It was just listening to the radio and what not?
FA: Yeah…
KM: Okay
FA: I married him when the war with Japan, when Japan what do you call it? Surrendered! Surrendered…
KM: Oh yeah, Uh-huh. Okay so, when you worked for Southern Bell, going back to that, you were a Telephone Operator. What did you do for that?
FA: Um…What did I do?
KM: Uh-hmm. Do you remember, like, what an operator even did back then?
FA: Yeah…We had a switchboard in front of us and, uh, you would get a call and you, uh, would pull the plug and oh gosh, when the conversation was over I think you would pull the plug, but you would answer and then they might say they wanted to call a certain city and if you couldn’t get the direct call you would have to call, if you were calling New York and we didn’t have a direct line we would have to go call Atlanta then they would put you up with New York or they might go through Philadelphia. To get to New York, it was a relay like thing.
KM: Wow, so how long would it usually take before people got connected to who they were like trying to get to?
FA: Um… it didn’t take very long if you had a good operator. I was a good operator.
KM: (laughs) So, not too long with you right?
FA: Yeah, probably in about a minute. It depended on where you were calling.
KM: It’s funny to think about that now, when you can just pick up a cell phone and dial who ever.
FA: I know it! Strange thing!
KM: So, um how long did you work there?
FA: Um, I worked there probably until I got married so that would be maybe a year…maybe…hold on. It was probably a year.
KM: Okay so um do you remember like uh, what are the things about radio that you remember? Did you have any radio shows that you particularly liked and stuff like that? That you remember listening to?
FA: Uh, my mom and dad… see they had a radio but a lot of times they were battery operated and you only had so much time to listen so we didn’t listen to it a lot. And I think after… I remember going to… after we went to Hawaii I sent a radio home. That’s kind of crazy. It wasn’t a battery, I know, so it must have been a plug-in radio. I know they had programs on but I cant remember… they had uh, you probably couldn’t use it, Amos and Andy they were uh I think they were white playing as blacks so I don’t know that might not do, but they have, I guess you call them, uh they would be continued to the next week like the old movie theatres when they would have a Saturday night show on cowboys and Indians they would stop the show right in an exciting place and then you would have to go back the next week to see what happens. That was kind of funny.
KM: (laughs) It’s kind of a smart idea. Keeps you coming back, huh?
FA: Yeah, and the radio it was the same way. But I can’t remember the shows. But I know they had some that were Western type.
KM: Yeah mostly Westerns and stuff… Well what do you remember about TV? Like about when TV first came out and what not?
FA: Well it was in black and white that’s for sure. Um, when it first came out our neighbors got a TV and it was so new that they got an extension and put it out in the yard and everybody’d gather around and watch TV because they were the only ones that had TV.
KM: That’s cool, that was nice of them to let everyone else watch (too).
FA: (laughs) If the weather wasn’t nice you didn’t watch TV outside, you had to go inside. Andy and I didn’t get a TV for a long time because they were quite expensive then.
KM: So what do you remember about you and Uncle Andy’s first TV and watching all those TV shows and stuff?
FA: Um, when we got our TV, there was several shows that we watched. Uh, I think there was a show, uh, Arthur Godfrey, I think it was Arthur Godfrey. We used to watch that a lot and I don’t know if they had soaps back then or not and if they did then I don’t remember.
KM: So did ya’ll just watch TV whenever, or did you just watch it at night after dinner?
FA: Usually at night, when we first, when the neighbors first got TV it was at night when everbody’d go out, just like a show or drive in. When you go back to those times, its really funny to talk about it now because at the time you didn’t think anything about it you were just, having a good time.
KM: Yeah that’s funny. So do you remember when they switched to color and stuff like that?
FA: Um, let me think. I don’t remember when they switched, but I remember when we got a color TV. We had black and white then… Uh, I can’t remember the year and I cant remember where we were living but it was a long time after black and white till they got color in.
KM: Well it takes a long time before those things become affordable and everything.
FA: Yeah! And for Andy and I we didn’t live payday-to-payday because… people always knew we didn’t spend all of our money before the next payday. People would come and see if they could borrow five dollars. And five dollars went a long way then. And I think we were the only ones with cash, and had money. But at that time we had a savings account, we didn’t have much in it but we made a habit of just saving maybe five dollars every payday we would put five dollars in. That was a lot back then.
KM: Well do you remember where you were on VJ-day and VE-day and stuff like that? You were pretty young when all that happened weren’t you?
FA: Yeah. Well I was married um, when the Japanese surrendered so I remember that because that was announced on the radio, that uh, “the Americans have dropped the atomic bomb on Japan”, I think they dropped first on… I can’t remember what city, but the Japanese didn’t surrender so they dropped another one, and they surrendered. But at that time the citizens of America thought that was the best thing to do because if the war had went on we would have lost so many people. And so it actually saved a lot of peoples lives and the Japanese too because they would have probably invaded anyway because they were… I think Truman was President and uh, he’s the one that decided that, to drop the bomb and save lives, Japanese and Americans.
KM: Okay, now lets fast-forward a little bit to today, like now a day and what not. So do you have Internet?
FA: Computer stuff? No. I don’t know anything about computers. We don’t have Internet.
KM: Do you have a cell phone?
FA: Yes.
KM: You have a cell phone?
FA: Uh-hmm…
KM: Do you like having a cell phone? Do you like that people can just call you anytime, wherever you are?
FA: Um, in a way because, well, I don’t have many people that have my cell phone number so I don’t get a lot of calls.
KM: (laughs) So you feel a little safer.
FA: Yeah. I don’t really like this caller-id because everybody knows who’s calling.
KM: Oh, yeah.
FA: And I thought “Ugh, I wonder who’s calling”… and you can’t make a call without… well it depends on who answers the phone, but it will tell you who’s coming, or who’s calling.
KM: They’ll know it’s you, huh?
FA: Uh-huh, when I call [indiscernible] he just picks up the phone and says “Hi, Foy”. How did he know it’s me? I didn’t even say hello.
KM: Yeah, I think Mama Jean and Papa, they screen their calls.
FA: Yeah.
KM: They wont pick up unless they want to talk to you.
FA: Uh-huh! There’s a lot of people who do that too, wont pick up the phone.
KM: (laughs) It’s true.
FA: If they don’t want to talk, it’s okay, just leave a message. Then they never call back. I think, “I called them and I left a message but they never call back.”
KM: So did you work any more after you and Uncle Andy were married?
FA: I worked in Hawaii, in the Naval Exchange and I didn’t work any more until he retired. And that was… I didn’t have to work but I thought, “Andy’s home all day and he’s working on his art and his painting and all that” and I thought, “well if he’s going to be down there all day doing that then I might as well be doing something.” But I only worked about six hours a day at a pharmacy.
KM: So what did you do in Hawaii then?
FA: We still had those little individual pharmacies, not the big places they have now.
KM: So what did you do in Hawaii then?
FA: Well I worked at the Navy Exchange and we’d go around the island a lot. There was one place where we always ate and they never let the soup ever get empty. They kept adding to it and they kept it going all the time. So they never had a … it was all left-overs I guess, I don’t know what they put in it. Isn’t that funny? They kept on cooking it. And it was the best soup, so we would go there and eat and have that soup. It was a stone soup but they just put all kinds of stuff in it. And I thought, “How’d they keep that soup all night and all day?” and I guess they just added stuff to it, and that’s all I can remember.
KM: So after Hawaii did ya’ll just move to Idaho? Or where did you go after that?
FA: No, we moved back to… well I say back, we moved to California. We lived down in San Diego for a while. I don’t know where we went after that… we were there twice. We were in Memphis three times, Rhode Island… uh, Virginia Beach and Jacksonville.
KM: So ya’ll were all over.
FA: Yeah… And we retired in Jacksonville that’s where he retired.
KM: Well Aunt Foy I think I have about enough here.
FA: Yeah?
KM: You are a great interviewer, interviewee.
FA: (laughs) Going back that far it makes you remember all these things.