Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: And my uncle, who at that time was a mail carrier, he was later made supervisor in Norfolk Post Office, had a Packard and they were very popular cars. My mother died when I was six, and I think it was either just before or just after my mother died, that he used to come and carry my grandmother, my mother's mother, and me and my sister to ride out to Virginia Beach. Just a Sunday afternoon, ride after church. And all along the road were signs, very low, painted white and black letters that said Gentiles only. Jewish people could not go to Virginia Beach and stay in a hotel there. And especially in the Cavalier, which is the hotel that I was just telling you about. 

Mary Hebert: The one that's on the hill. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Yes. Now, it was not until about the mid to late '30s that an Italian man whose name was Guzzy built the Pinewood Hotel. It was on the corner of 9th and Atlantic. And he accepted Negro, not Negroes, no Negroes were there anyway, except for working, domestic work. But he accepted Jewish people in his hotel. As a matter of fact, that is about all he had in the hotel, because it was classified as the second-best hotel on the beach. And this was because of Cavalier, naturally, was, I suppose you'd call it grand old Dame and first Hotel, and only Gentiles could go there. 

Mary Hebert: And there were actually signs along the highway saying— 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: When I was a child, yes. Now, they probably removed those signs after I got to be about 6, 7, 8 years old. I don't know. But I do remember one Sunday afternoon as we drove along the highway, I remember remarking to my grandmother, "What is a Gentile?" And she told me, "Gentiles are anyone who is not Jewish." I said, "Well, that means it's all right for us." But you see, we still could not go to hotels then. They didn't open up hotels to Negroes, I don't think, until, I don't remember whether it was the '50s or the '60s. I think it was the '60s though. I'm sure it was the '60s. 

Mary Hebert: And you were talking about Seaview Beach was the only beach— 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Seaview Beach—No, there were was Ocean Breeze Beach for Negroes. There was Norfolk City Beach for Negroes. They were in, I guess, you'd call that a portion of or getting ready to be a portion of Princess Anne County, I'm not sure. But then that strip, there was a small strip of land that was bought by a group of professional men, doctors and whatnot, who had enough money to purchase Seaview Beach? 

Mary Hebert: Were these Black professionals? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Yes. Yes. And that was very popular, Seaview Beach was popular during, I think it was popular during the late '40s or the '40s. And— 

Mary Hebert: Would you go out there to the beach? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: It was all right for Negroes to go there. They had a beach house and I think they had purchased those. If I could just go through all the old magazines that I brought over here from my other house that I had no business bringing, because I haven't gotten rid of them yet. There was a passage in Life Magazine about Norfolk Society, Norfolk Negro Society. And there were several prominent women in Norfolk who, I suppose, I don't know what Life magazine considered the so, or they considered themselves so, but they were supposed to be for all practical purposes, I suppose, society leaders. And they had a little pretty good writeup in there of Seaview Beach and showing all the things that they had done to accomplish that. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: It didn't last very long though, because the beach, if I'm not mistaken, that strip was purchased by somebody, it could have been sold to other people for a certain amount of money, just like Ocean Breeze Beach was up for sale, but nobody purchased that. And you see where Ocean Breeze Beach was, there's a lake down there, if I'm not mistaken, called Lake Joyce. And they had built beautiful houses on there, but that was strictly a White neighborhood. If I'm not mistaken, it was called Bayview. I think it's Bayview, I'm not sure. But that's where the houses are down there. And I don't know whether they are occupied, it would be classified as a relatively old neighborhood now, but I don't know whether they've ever been occupied by our Negroes or whether it's still primarily White. 

Mary Hebert: Let's go back a little bit to your childhood. Were you born in Norfolk? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: I was born in Norfolk. 

Mary Hebert: And who are your parents? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Okay, that's a good— 

Mary Hebert: What were their names? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: That's a good question. Let me go back to my grandmother. That's about as far as I can go back. My grandmother and my grandmother's father, I did not know, but she used to tell us stories about him. My grandmother was one of the first graduates of Norfolk Public Schools. She was 14 years old when she finished eighth grade. And that was as far as they could go, unless they went, if they had enough money or the parents had enough money, they could go to Hampton Institute, which is at that particular time it was all they had, but that was really nothing but a glorified high school. And you could take two years there and come out and be a teacher. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: In some places in Virginia, oh, North Carolina or wherever, but especially Virginia, you could go to the eighth grade and maybe qualified to be a teacher if you had—See, that program then was very highly concentrated and it really didn't embrace anything but reading, writing, arithmetic, and possibly some of the subjects for girls to become good wives and mothers. And that's about all. But it was concentrated. Now, she went, as I recall, her telling us this, there were five students in her class, and that would have been 1883. 

Mary Hebert: And that's at Norfolk School or is that at Hampton? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: This is Norfolk. This is Norfolk. And there were two girls both named Josephine. One came from a rather prominent family, the Tuckers, because we have a school in Norfolk named after this girl's brother Richard Tucker School in Norfolk is named after Josephine Tucker's brother and my grandmother, who was Josephine Johnson. 

Mary Hebert: Had your great-grandfather been a slave? Or— 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: No. 

Mary Hebert: —was he free? He had been free. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Yeah. She said that her father was never a slave, but as I tell people, that is nothing to crow over, because slavery was, I don't know if it was incidental or accidental, but almost every nation in the world has been enslaved. So I mean, that's nothing to be all proud about to say you were never a slave. But her father was not a slave. He was, I think a product of, let me see now, a White father and a Black mother, but he was not a slave. And he must have been a seaman at one time, because I don't know where he was born, but I used to hear her talk about trips to Baltimore, which means he might have come out of Baltimore, I don't know. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: But I do know he settled in Norfolk. And he married a woman who I suppose was a Norfolkian, and she was my grandmother's mother. But she died when Grandma was quite young, and so he had to rear her by himself. So her being an infant, her mother's friend had a child just about the same age, and he carried my grandmother to this woman so that she could nurse her. He married later on, of course, and they were a family. Now, they lived in a place which ran out to the street, it's called Addington Lane, and it ran out to Commercial Place. Now where Waterside is in Norfolk? You've been there? 

Mary Hebert: I think so. Or I've been by it. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Okay. Well, you know how all of that, Main Street, when you go down Main Street and you're going into Waterside, all of that was where the ferries would come up. And you had to go down the street Commercial Place in order to get to the ferry. And the ferry, as I recall when I was a child, was a nickel ride, you see. And it was just a five-minute ride, but it was very fascinating. That's cool. And— 

Mary Hebert: Your grand great-grandfather insisted that your grandmother get an education and that she go to school. Was that important to him? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: I suppose it must have been, because she went as far as they could go at the time she went to eighth grade. And at that time there were no jobs as such for young girls. And if you didn't go to school, you just sat home. And so she was saying that by the time she got to be about 17, I think she met my grandfather. And strangely enough, my grandfather, that's my mother's father and mother I'm talking about now, lived in, it's classified as Norfolk today, it's been Norfolk for years, but it was Norfolk County then, Bolton Street, which runs out to Princess Anne Road. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: And my grandmother would not marry him until at the time they called it saved, until he got religion. And they were both members of First Baptist Church, 5th Street First Baptist Church, which is a historical landmark incidentally. And she taught Grandpa to read. Now, he was not a slave either because he was born, however, he might have been born into slavery, but he was not a slave, because he was born just about the time when the Emancipation Proclamation was declared. I think Grandpa was born in 1863, and, see, Grandma was born in 1869, so that was after the war was over. 

Mary Hebert: Was your grandfather from Norfolk or had he come from somewhere? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: No, he was from Norfolk County. 

Mary Hebert: Norfolk County. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: It's hard for me to even think of that street, Bolton Street as being Norfolk County, because I knew it all my life as Norfolk. But it was classified as county then. See, Norfolk County was a very big county. And— 

Mary Hebert: How'd they meet? Because it seems if they lived on different parts of what's now Norfolk or the Tidewater region. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: She would have lived, and of course he eventually did after they married, in what is classified as a downtown area of Norfolk, the streets that most Black families lived on, Cumberland Street, Queen Street, which is really Brambleton Avenue now, but it was called Queen Street then. And there's a church on Brambleton Avenue that's called Queen Street Baptist Church. They never dropped the name, because it was Queen Street, but it's Brambleton Avenue now. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: And my grandfather was drayman. He had three horses. One of them looked like a Clydesdale, and the other two were just ordinary work horses. And he delivered. And sometimes he would even bring bodies in for funerals, and when people were moving, he would move the entire family and whatnot. He had his own business. He didn't work for anybody. He had his own business. Of course, it sort of petered out after the cars came in when everybody was trying to buy a truck, because he had horses for his occupation, whatever he did, he had his horses. 

Mary Hebert: Were they considered what we would call nowadays middle class? Or— 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: That word didn't come into existence until—I mean, you just didn't hear about, you heard of low class and high class. They had middle, but you didn't hear very much about it. I don't know when the middle class was invented, but they would have been classified— 

Mary Hebert: In the middle. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: —in the middle, I suppose, because there were certain things—And people lived by the mores of society that existed during that day. If you were a professional, naturally, you were higher on the economic scale as well as the social scale. My grandmother was always, she did not go to school herself, I mean as far as higher education, but she was always very much interested in education. And she bettered herself. I think what she had was she had a good group of teachers from first to eighth grade, and after that, she just had to do it on her own, whatever. Now— 

Mary Hebert: Did she ever work? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Yes, she did. She worked for—I'm trying to think. There was a seminary, I think it overlooked the water. I think it was in Ghent. I think it was called Leache and Wood Seminary. Now, I'm not absolutely certain about those names, but I think I'm right. It was a girl's school and she worked there for a while. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: When she married, she had three children. She had two sons and a daughter, my mother. Now, when my mother was 21 years old, a friend of the family, who was also a seamen, and when you hear me talk about seamen, you see, Norfolk was a seaport town, see? 

Mary Hebert: Right. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: And— 

Mary Hebert: The sailors. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Yes. And a friend of the family came by and brought a young Ceylonese. See the Ceylonese are from what they used to be called Ceylon up until a few years ago. It's now Sri Lanka. And my mother and he fell in love, and they married, that's my father. They used to tell the story of how he, in those days, I mean, you always ask for the hand of the young lady, and I think Papa had intentions, but he was scared. So he didn't ask Grandma and Grandpa for Mama's hand. But I think they had made some kind of secret pact to say that they were going to get married. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Now, he was, I think, living in Baltimore, but he frequented this area. When his ship was dock and whatnot, he frequented this area. So anyway, he came to Norfolk that particular weekend expecting to find Mama at home. And she went to Baltimore expecting to see him. And I guess the story of Evangeline, the ships passed. And when he found out that Mama had gone, he turned right around and went back to Baltimore and they were married. And of course, they sent Grandma and Grandpa a telegram saying they had gotten married. And the way the story was told to us was that Grandpa said the first damn he had ever said, and Grandma cried. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: So anyway, it turned out all right, because Papa, when he left Ceylon, he just traveled all over and he never went back home. But he had lots of relatives back home and his mother was still living, his father was still living, and his sisters and brothers and whatnot, but he never went back. Now, we did, my sister and I went. And we knew they existed, because Papa would send his parents money every now and then, and he would write to them, and we did receive letters from them. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: But we lost track of them and didn't hear any more from them, especially during the Japanese war. They had migrated anyway. They had left Ceylon and went to live in Ipoh Perak, which was, I suppose, on the Malaysian peninsula. And many of them settled in Malaysia, which was at that time Malaya. What is Malaysia now? And I have some cousins who are in Singapore now, and I have some in Kuala Lumpur. I have some still in Ceylon, but I did not meet them. 

Mary Hebert: But you did travel out to Malaysia and [indistinct 00:23:25]— 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: We went to Malaysia. We stayed 31 days. And they have been here, one or two of them have been here. The way my sister got in touch with—See, we are Episcopalians, Papa belonged to the Church of England before he came here, but he had to find a church, which was really the counterpart of the Anglican church. So we were at the Grace Episcopal, which is located on Brambleton Avenue, in Norfolk. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Well, I'm trying to think, Lillian, that was my sister, Lillian was reading one of our church bulletins, I think it was at that time called the Jamestown Churchman, it's called the Jamestown Cross now. And she saw in there the name of the new bishop of—No, she saw in there in the name of the Bishop of Ceylon. And she wrote to him. Well, they were having an incoming bishop, a new bishop. And so he got the letter. And the day that he got the letter, one of my first cousins, her name was Beatrice, she walked into his office. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: She and her husband were both employees of, I suppose you could call it, something like a medical center, because almost all of them are either nurses or doctors. And he told her, "I've got somebody I know you want to hear from, because you haven't ever heard from them." And she says, "Well, who on Earth would—" He said, "Somebody in America." And then she thought, she knew she had some cousins, but she had never seen us. So she got in touch with her father, who was a doctor at that time. He was living with one of her sisters in Singapore. And he would just go around from sister to sister. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Anyway, he had a compound, and that's the way they pronounced it. They are nasal, he said, "Compong," in Kuala—It's not in Kuala Lumpur, it's near Kuala Lumpur, a little village called Tanjung Malim. And she got in touch with her father, and told him that she had heard from us. So her sister, incidentally, we had four Lillians in the family, her sister, Lillian, had a husband who was chief pharmacist of Singapore, and he was making a rural health tour for the Rural Health Organization. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: So his father-in-law got in touch with him, and told him, "Well, you are getting ready to go to America in a few days, and I want you to make sure you see the cousins." So he was scheduled to come to Richmond, but instead—I mean he went to Richmond, but he came here, he flew here. And my husband and my sister's husband, all of us went down to the airport to meet him. We knew him immediately. And so he stayed with us for about two or three days, the weekend, and we carried him back to Richmond. And since that time, of course, that was in '66, but he came back over here in '82 to visit. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: He brought his wife, who is my first cousin and one of his sons with him. They were all making the world tour, because they were coming here and then going back by way of Washington DC, New York, and then into Canada, and then back into Europe. And he has three sons I believe now who live in Holland, I think they do. And then I've got another cousin, we stayed with her, part of the time in a little village. And she has, at the time, the children are very young, daughters. Her daughter was about nine years old, and now she'd be about 36, because that was 27 years ago. But it was just a beautiful experience. And my sister kept a scrapbook of it. And I have pictures of some of them if you want to see them. 

Mary Hebert: Sure, after we do the— 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Uh-huh. 

Mary Hebert: Did your grandparents ever accept the marriage between your parents? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: I think they did. I think they did. But it was just like, you don't realize it at the time, sometime you're not even aware of it, but sometime you catch people looking at you strangely. You hear people say things about—And I don't think they mean any harm, but they do that, for instance, Papa was a great visitor. He used to love to carry us out on Sunday afternoons, and he used to love to tell people about his travels, and they liked to hear them. But I've always had it in the back of my head that they were also making fun of him. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: He had a slight accent. He didn't have a great deal of accent. Now, there are certain words that I suppose because we had lived in the house with him, we picked up a little bit of it, but our accent is nothing like his was. His was strictly British. And for instance, Papa, there was some words he never used. For instance, when he was pronouncing certain words, like we say, "Been [phonetic bin]," and he said, "Been [phonetic bean]." Over there we say, "Stenog-rapher," he said, "Steno-grapher." And he never used terms like, in America, you hear a great deal of the whole sort of fancy names and cute names for getting rid of waste and whatnot, like the word pee. I never heard Papa say anything like that. He never used the word pee. He always used urinate. So it was— 

Mary Hebert: He grew up with that British— 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: I mean, it was pretty fair—It was just like any other have family, they have fusses and so forth. My father, the one thing I remember, and I think it must be in my genes too, I'm a pack rat. I save everything. As you can see by all these books, magazines were—My mother used to, and this was when I was quite young, my mother kept one of those tin cans that are illustrated that you see now that you get in antique shops that'll cost you a fortune now, my mother had a big one and she kept her bills in. And every time Papa came home from a voyage, they would sit down and go over what she had spent during the month. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: And I remember hearing my mother say to my father, I know a 1,000 times, "Well, I overspent this month." And he would always answer her with, "That's all right sweetheart, there's plenty more in the shop." I never knew where that shop was. He didn't like debt. He always liked paying bills on time, and making sure they were paid. And it took some doing, because they were living in my grandmother's house, it took some doing for her to push him to buy a house. Well, they bought a house further down the street, not on the same street from my grandparents. 

Mary Hebert: What street was that again? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: That street that we lived on was Goff Street, G-O-F-F. It's the same street where the police station is now. As a matter of fact, the police station has a portion, if I'm not mistaken, of our corner lot that we bought, but I'm not absolutely certain about that. 

Mary Hebert: So your parents bought their own house? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Yes, they did. And right after they bought the house, Mama died. She had, I guess, pneumonia or something because she—And see, at the time, people did not have central heat and moving, and she moved in the dead of winter, February. And so, she just— 

Mary Hebert: Now you went to live with your grandparents after her death? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: No, my grandparents left their house and came up to live with us, because their house, they gave over to their younger son, the youngest son rather. 

Mary Hebert: Was your house bigger than the grandparents' house? Is that why they didn't— 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Yes, it was. It was bigger and it was a better house, and it was bigger, definitely bigger. And that is where Mama was and Papa would come in because he would go out and stay for two weeks and then come back in like that. He ran from Norfolk to places like New Haven, Bridgeport, Connecticut, like that. 

Mary Hebert: Was it around 1930 when your mother died? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Uh-huh, my mother died in 1926. 

Mary Hebert: And how old were you when she died? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Six years old. I was in the second grade. 

Mary Hebert: And where did you go to school? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: I went to school at John T. West Elementary School, which was located on Bolton Street, which had been Norfolk County but was now Norfolk. And I went there from one through six. And we went to kindergarten too. I went to a kindergarten that was run by a woman, she was Negro, but she looked like a big German woman. And she had a kindergarten for years and years and years. And the things that she taught you, you almost didn't need to go to the first grade. 

Mary Hebert: She taught you how to read and— 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Yes. 

Mary Hebert: —your alphabets and [indistinct 00:35:45]— 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Just about everything. And then of course your parents picked up from there. Now, my grandmother and my mother used to read to us all the time. My sister was a librarian. I guess that's where we got this love of books from. 

Mary Hebert: Did your mother have an education beyond the eighth grade? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: My mother went to, there was a school that was established in Norfolk by the Presbyterians, it was called Norfolk Mission College. And they— 

Mary Hebert: [indistinct 00:36:22] college, wasn't it? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Huh? 

Mary Hebert: Didn't they train teachers at Norfolk Mission? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: No, that, again, that was more or less a nice high school, they didn't call it that, they called it Norfolk Mission College. But most of the folks who left there went to a college after they left there. Now, my mother went there for a while, but she did not graduate. My uncles went there, as far as I know. I know several people—Now, the Norfolk Mission College alumni has now got an association, which they maintain, they give scholarships to children. In fact, all of the descendants of people who went to that school are members, if they, of course, pay their dues. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: My sister and I are members, and my niece, my sister's daughter, I think this past year she made the introductory speech for them. They always have their activities over at Norfolk State University. But it's a very nice organization and it fosters education, the scholarships aren't great big ones, but they give sizable scholarships to worthy students. And they always try to have a boy and a girl there who are receiving the scholarships at the time we give the dinner. 

Mary Hebert: Any amount helps a college student. Excuse me. Was John T. West Elementary School close to your house? Did you have to walk to school every day? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Yes, I walked, it was no more than about two blocks, about two, three blocks at the most. And the principal of that school, when I was there, was a man who had grown up practically with my grandmother, because my grandmother lived in the same apartment that he did. I think Grandma lived downstairs and he lived upstairs in that apartment I was telling you, Addington Lane running out to Commercial Place. And he went on to college and whatnot. But he was a North Carolinian, but he was here as a very young child. His name was Jacox. And there is a school in elementary school. It was a junior high school, but it's an elementary school named for him right now, DG Jacox Elementary School. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Grandma said he was about a year or two younger than she, and they used to play and fight and play and fight. And when I got to trying to John T. West and I was under him, he used to tell me all the time, "I knew your grandmother. We used to play together all the time." 

Mary Hebert: How many children were at John T. West? Do you have any idea? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Let me see. They were, I'm trying to count the number, because it had an old part and it had a new part. And that building incidentally, it's a pity, it's a excellent brick building, because it's solid brick and it's boarded up right now, has been boarded up for years. It's on Bolton Street near the railroad track just before you get into St. Julian Avenue. And nobody has done anything at all about that building. They really ought to make it some kind of— 

Mary Hebert: Use the building. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Yeah, mm-hmm. It would be a kind of memorial to all the past students that they had. But nothing has been done about that building as I know anything about. And it had two floors and it had one little frame building that they used for a lunchroom. They didn't have too many lunchrooms at first. And they had a framed building, where the woman and her daughter used to make sandwiches and whatnot. And the kids used to go. And in fact, I just thought it was a delightful place to go and sit, because we used to make friends with the, I don't know what you'd call her, you couldn't call her dietician, but that's what they call them now in cafeterias. 

Mary Hebert: She ran the cafeterias. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Yeah. And I remember, too, the unpaved streets, almost all of, except for the very latest and the areas that had been predominantly White at first, all the streets were dirt streets. And were as muddy, when it rained, as anything you ever seen. It wasn't mud, it was maw. And I was reminded of this, because now in Southeast Asia they have dirt streets, some, not too many, they're side streets, but they have dirt streets and they have paved streets. And the dirt streets they call Lorongg, L-O-R-O-N-G-G, the paved streets they call Jalan, J-A-L-A-N. Don't ask me why. I mean, if you see that in front of an address, you will know, if you've ever been Southeast Asian, that this Lorongg, you know that person lives on a dirt street, and if it's Jalan, he lives on a paved street. 

Mary Hebert: So most of the streets in your neighborhood were dirt streets? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: At that time, yes, they were. 

Mary Hebert: When did they pave them? 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: They didn't get around to paving Goff Street until the school was put there. Let me see, Jacox Junior High School was put there, and it was on Marshall Avenue, but you went down Goff Street, and the very center of it faced Goff Street. I don't think they paved that street until, and they didn't pave the entire street then, they paved the area, which was closer to the school, I think it was 1949. Now, as far as sidewalks are concerned, they didn't have any sidewalks there. When my sister and I took over our father's house after he had died, and she had married, we paved down the side of the house and in the front of the house, the sidewalk. We put the sidewalk there. That's why when I go by and see that police station, I say, "That's my sidewalk." 

Mary Hebert: So you'd have to walk to school through the mud, when it was [indistinct 00:44:21]. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: Well, when it was rainy and every child had boots or rubbers, they call them rubbers. Why my mother wouldn't buy me those boots, I don't know. The boots would come up, just like rubber boots would come up to here. And I don't think she thought that boots were particularly nice for little girls, because she bought me nothing but rubbers. And every time it rained, I got stuck in the mud and she would have to come and get me out. 

Mary Hebert: But you said that the paved streets that were in your neighborhood were streets that had once been White neighborhoods. 

Lena Van-Arbadie Dabney: If they were, now for instance, in our neighborhood, I was talking to a girl last night about that, one of my cousins on my mother's side, and she says, "Every time I call you, you give me a little bit of history." I said, "well, you don't know it, so—" She was saying that the Huntersville neighborhood, there is a recreation center out there near Goff Street, on Goff Street, I think, and they call it the Huntersville Civic Center or something like that. Anyway, she was saying that they had a reunion some years ago. 

Mary Hebert: I need to turn this tape over.