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
- "There was that core group of people that had fought the road and fought the dilapidation, they formed that bond. And that excitement spread… I think moving into a neighborhood like this does change you. It gives you a grounding that we don’t have in so many other ways. People don’t stay in their jobs anymore. If you get mad at people in your church, you change your church. If you get mad at people in your school, you change your school… We’ve been in this house for 22 years, and we don’t plan to ever move.” – Terry Harper
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2 Responses and Counting
Thanks for doing the interview with our darling Mema. Unfortunately, I could not get the audio, because computer is stupid and old, not as old as Mema, but too old to talk. Ha Ha. Thanks again. I sent a link to my daughter and daughter-in-law. SSB
Thanks for the video.