Interview with Mary Kostash 1.2

Partial Transcript: What would you eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Segment Synopsis: They would mostly eat milk products. Mother would make cheese (what she called roblene moloko, Kostash says she always thought it was a strange word). They would have eggs, and very little meat because they had chicken. Kostash never had beef in her life, once in a while they would buy pork. Vegetable in the garden. Mother also worked for the Chinese gardeners, they had acres and acres. She would work there for 10 cents per hour to make a little money during the 1930s.
There was one Chinese group.
Mary would walk home from school for lunch, baba would always have soup, bread and butter. No desert except she would by apples.

Keywords: Chinese; roblene moloko

Subjects: meals

Segment Synopsis: They would go to Presbyterian church because they had a Christmas concert, Santa Claus came and everyone got a bag. There was an orange in it. This was our Christmas treat.

Subjects: Christmas; concerts; meals; ritual meals

Partial Transcript: Did you have any toys at all?

Segment Synopsis: "No doll. Nothing. No toys at all. I do not ever remember having a toy."

Subjects: children; dolls (toys)

Segment Synopsis: Kostash describes games that children would play at that time.
They were also allowed to make "a little fire" outside. They would rost potatoes and corm. And English people next door would give them marshmallows to roast.
They sang a lot of cowboy songs. Kostash had a record-player (she does not remember how they got it, maybe somebody gave it to them) and parents would buy her some of the records and she liked singing "clean songs, wonderful songs about beautiful feelings, love of God, nature. Good songs to be brought up on".

Subjects: children's games; cowboy songs; fire

Segment Synopsis: Mary's family would buy baking powder for cooking, flour, sugar, regular things to clean the place, soap. Occasionally she would have candy but that was not very often.

Segment Synopsis: Mary's stepfather went to Minneapolis (Minnesota) for work and came home with a little canary for Mary as a present which she loved very much.

Subjects: birds; present

Segment Synopsis: Kostash's mother would get some clothing from the people that she worked for, and then she would tear it apart (if it was big) and make Mary a dress out of it. Sometimes she could wear the dress that she brought. Her first dress she bought in her first year of teaching in 1933. Kostash recalls her experience when she arrived in Hairy Hills for the first time.

Subjects: clothing; hair

Segment Synopsis: Kostash was teaching sixty students in grades one and two.
She noticed that a little sister and a brother would attend school in turn so she asked why is that. She found out that they had only one pair of shoes to go to school so they had to take a turn in shoes. She bought a pair of shoes for them.

Subjects: poor people; poverty; school children; students

Segment Synopsis: Mary says she was not a usual teenager as she was from a poor family and started working form eighteen. She tells a story about a ticket strip that would cost 1 dollar for 10 tickets for children and only four tickets for adults. So she went to the car barns and asked whether she can have green tickets until the end of June. She had got a green ticket and therefore saved family money.

Segment Synopsis: When Kostash was in a high school, every night after school she had to take the cows out because on the other side of a fence there was beautiful green grass. So she would take the cow to pasture and take her homework with her and do her memory work there. Kostash comments this: " How many children [of her age in a city] would do that. I was a farm girl! And I think I was the only farm girl!" Her peers would meet and go dancing. She never danced with anybody until she went to teach.

Subjects: teenagers; working poor

Segment Synopsis: Even when Kostash was a teacher she was afraid to dance. One of the teachers would take her out and teach her a few dances. Kostash sums up: "So I missed my teenager days." She would never go to a party. Fifteen-year-old and sixteen-year-old peers would have a kissing party. She was invited to one of them but did not go. "I was really different".

Subjects: kissing games; teenagers

Segment Synopsis: Kostash describes their house. A two-storey house, three rooms downstairs - one living room, one bedroom and a kitchen. No electricity, no running water. They have to walk three blocks over to a pump to get water. That was Kostash's work too. Upstairs it was one big room but she divided it in two. They had two barns for horses.

Subjects: house building

Segment Synopsis: Kostash's stepfather bought two horses in order to go to small towns around Edmonton and buy chickens, bring them home and go to the market on Saturday to sell them. And Kostash had to go with him because he did not know how to count money.
Once he could not water his horses on his way back because it was drought and wells dried out on farms. He tried several places but could not get water anywhere. He came through the West Edmonton and there was the West Edmonton hotel. They had a huge tub full of water. It was there for horses. He stopped there to water horses. And they drank too much and died.

Subjects: horses; stepfathers

Segment Synopsis: Stepfather sold their home after Kostash went teaching and bought an acreage. (Kostash also briefly tells a story about how she was asked to sign a document that would allow the administration to pay her only 5,000 instead of 6,000. Being afraid to lose her job she wanted to sign it. But then got advice from principle not to sign it). So she could send some money home to support her family. Every Saturday her stepfather would go to market and Kostash would come with him to help to sell vegetables.

Subjects: teachers; wages

Segment Synopsis: Mary speaks about her husband, whom she miss, and two daughters.