Ruby Bullock

“I was born in Franklin Count, in Bunn, in 1915. I moved to Raleigh in 1950… I was born and raised on a farm. We had to plant stuff and chop cotton and tobacco. There was always something to do, but yet it was a good life. You didn’t live under stress like people are living now… I got married in 1932. That was Hoover days, the recession. My husband even built us a hoover cart. It was just a little cart with two wheels and we had a mule to pull it.”

“In 1998, one of the woman at the lunch counter (at Person Street Pharmacy) said, ‘Mee-maw, why don’t you bring us one of your lemon pound cakes and we’ll see how it sells.’ I’ve been making them cakes ever since. I keep telling them I’m going to retire, but they say ‘No way. No way.’

“My mother lived to be 104 and seven months. Her birthday was May the 11th, 1888. She was little like me and tough. She was a hard-working woman… We’d make our own soap out of grease and lye. Cut that stuff up and let it dry. But that cleaned clothes like crazy. Put ’em in that wash pot, have them clothes boiling. Take ’em out. We’d have to rinse them through three waters. Then hang them on the line. I still hang them on the back line.”

“I got a lot of good memories.”

Ruby Bullock moved into a house behind the Krispy Kreme in 1950 with her husband and four children, and moved to her current house on Bloodworth Street in 1969.

To listen to her story, Ruby Bullock