Origins    

 "I was one of those 'honey you ain't gonna believe this' babies!"

Family History

Anita: My full name is Anita Rose Hall; my birth name is Anita Rose Hatfield.  I’m out of the Hatfield and McCoys: I’m one of those Hatfields!

Hilary: That’s incredible!  So do you know much about that history? ‘Cause I really don’t know much about it.

A: Not a whole lot.  What I was told growing up was that when the feud broke out, Devil Lance sent either three sons or three grandsons down to the area where I was raised because he was afraid all of the men would be killed out and the name would die and so he sent those boys down there.  Well, that’s how I got in Tennessee.  Because Devil Lance owned land in Tennessee that he sent these men to.

H: And Devil Lance is …grandfather?  Father?

A:  I don’t know.  He was the one that started it all. He was there when it started. (laughs) And this feud did not end until my oldest son was like eight years old.  I mean, a Hatfield could go shoot a McCoy or a McCoy could shoot a Hatfield and the state could veritably do nothing about it because that end had never been resolved.

H: So how did it resolve?

A: Some of Devil Lance’s people signed an agreement with the government that the feud would be put to rest.   

Family

Hilary: So tell me, how many siblings did you have again?

Anita: I had five.  The oldest one was a boy, George Jr., Steve, and Tommy…  And then the fourth boy died when he was three days old.  They think it was due to complications at birth because my mother had all these children at home.  She was a diabetic, which they didn’t understand back then and she had twelve, thirteen pound children.  And my mother was like half the size of me, you know, she was a tiny little woman.  Then the next child was a girl, and then me. I was a girl, nine and a half years later.  And they tell me I was a planned baby.  I was one of those “honey you ain’t gonna believe this” babies! 

H: Did they tell you that or did you just come up with that?

A: No, I put two and two together and came up with four!  My mother would always say, “Oh you were planned, you were planned.”  But my father never would say nothing.  And my father never lied. So I’m one of those “honey you ain’t gonna believe this” babies. (laughs)

----

A: I mostly grew up with my nieces and nephews.  All my nieces and nephews are closer to my age, so they’re more like my brothers and sisters.  I had a niece, Janice Anne, who from December to July, we were the same age.  And she passed away with ovarian cancer when we were 16.  She was 15 when they found it, but she died shortly after her 16^th birthday.   [voice quiets]  And … that was, I guess, the most traumatic thing in my life so far… was that.  Giving her up and watching her go through that.  We were the same age…you know… so.  It was, you know… why can’t this be me… instead of her?  And it was really awful to watch her go through that.  [voice gets a little louder for next sentence] But that’s neither here nor there, and it’s in the past and that’s where it’s going to stay. 

----

H: Were you close with you family?

     (pause)

A: My nieces and nephews, yeah.

H: What about your parents?

A: Yes.  Yes.  My, my dad and I … mom always said that we were so much alike, dad could have shit me.

----

And… now my mother was my best friend, ever in my life.  Never had a friend like my mom.  ‘Cause no matter what, I mean she might really get mad at me and blow up and say she was disappointed in me and everything else, but she was still there for me, no matter what happened in life, my mom was always there for me. 

So… now my father was very judgmental.  And he was like three strikes and you’re out - except he didn’t give us three strikes.  With him, once was a mistake, twice was a habit.  So my father was the strict one in the family.  And my father was definitely: there’s no gray area.  It’s black or it’s white, it’s right or it’s wrong.  There’s no in between.  

My parents were very southern hill people.  And my dad was a coal miner.  And my mother, they weren’t very educated.  My mother graduated from high school; my dad only had a third grade education.  He spent three years in Europe during World War II.  They had one child before he left and when he came back they continued to have the rest of us.  He worked in the coal mines and he raised us that way.  We were raised that just because you have money, you don’t just throw it around, you watch because one day you won’t have money and you’ll need it.  Because with the coal business it is feast or famine.  My mother never worked.  Never worked a day at a public job in her entire life.

H: Did she work on the farm?

A: Yeah, yeah.  Her job was to take care of us kids, keep the house clean, have dad’s meals on the table, pack his lunch, you know, be his gopher.  My dad could never have taken a bath without my mom ‘cause he never knew what H and C meant on the bath handles.  She always ran his bath, laid his clothes out, everything for him.  You know, he never had to ask for anything when he sat down to a meal, she kept his glass full, his coffee was there when he wanted it, he never asked for anything.  It was like she just naturally tuned into that and kept him served and she was his possession, but she was his most prized possession.  He was very good to my mother and, and he took care of her.  I mean, I know it sounds like he was a macho male chauvinist thing, but he really wasn’t.  That was just the way they grew up and that was the way their family was.  They really didn’t understand us girls, when we grew up we wanted to work and have outside jobs: [in a different voice, like her parents] women aren’t supposed to work, they’re supposed to stay home and take care of their babies and their husbands! 

Farming and Childhood

Hilary: I heard you telling one of your customers that you grew up on a farm, is that right?

Anita: Yeah.  We had a small farm in Tennessee.

H: What kind of farm?

A: Mostly for beef cattle, pasture farm.  My father raised beef cattle.  We had a, what people called a family milk cow and I had to get out every morning and every evening to milk her before and after school - she had to be milked.  We raised our own chickens, so we had our own poultry.  We had our own fresh eggs.  We raised a pig every year, so we had our own pork.  And then we had our own beef, naturally.  We raised the cattle.  And that was my dad’s motto: if you’re going to raise it, be prepared to eat it, you know.  So I kind of grew up knowing that attachment could only go so far because eventually the animal is going to be on your dinner plate. (laughs)

...