The recollections of Betty (Allen) Harness and her childhood ( edited from an audio tape interview with her in December, 1993)

Betty Allen with Mother Liddy

Betty (Allen) Harness' earliest recollections are living on the family farm at Drasco, Arkansas. Her parents were sharecroppers. Betty went to the fields to work with the rest of the family to chop cotton. She and her sister Lillie didn't like to chop cotton and tried to get out of it whenever they could. Betty said she worked more often in the family garden as well as picking fruit. She helped dry the fruit and can the vegetables. Bettie Allen Finch ( her father Calvin's sister), also worked in the fields chopping cotton. In those days it was very unfashionable for women to tan (the lighter their skin the better), and Betty says that Aunt Bettie Finch would put cow manure on her face to keep from tanning/burning while chopping cotton.

Betty Allen at 6 Months

There was no electricity and thus no refrigeration on the farm. They had a dug well (later a drilled well), and that's where they got their drinking water and water for bathing, cooking, etc. They had a storm cellar, built primarily so the family could hide in it during cyclones (tornadoes) which were apparently more frequent in that area than they are now. However the storm cellars had a dual purpose. They were also used to store food the family had canned, because the cellar was cool in the summer, but wouldn't freeze in the winter.

They cooked their meals by a wooden cook stove in the kitchen. That, and another wood stove in the living room was the only source for heat during the winter. There was no indoor plumbing. They had an outhouse. When you wanted to take a bath, you heated water on the wooden stove, poured it into a wash tub and got in.

Drasco, Arkansas Class of 1925

Drasco was about 15 miles from Heber Springs, Arkansas. Drasco at the time had a school (through the 8th grade only), two general stores and a post office. Although Heber was only 15 miles away, Betty said she never went there as a child that she can recall. There was a horse drawn mail wagon that regularly went through Drasco to Heber. The roads were only dirt roads at the time...and were badly rutted. The travel was long and unpleasant.

Everyone was quite poor. No one had any money. The only source of revenue was cotton that they raised as sharecroppers. Betty's father, Calvin, usually sold a couple of bales of cotton every fall. She thinks he got $400 or $500 a bale. That was their income for the year. Otherwise, they lived on the food they raised on the farm...corn was ground into meal...hogs were slaughtered...and the meat salted (still no refrigeration). In the summer, the family would put milk in the well bucket and lower it into the well water to keep it cool and from spoiling. The milk came from several cows the family owned and milked daily.

The Old Drasco School

The schoolhouse at Drasco, where Betty went to school, was a one room school house, with one teacher for all grades. There was no high school in Drasco. Betty went to school at Drasco until she was about 15. She then moved to Heber Springs and got a job in a restaurant for awhile. She also worked several other jobs until going to work as a waitress at Aunt Fannie Sales restaurant and rooming house. She worked for Aunt Fannie for about two years.

Betty Allen holding Billy West

It was while working for Aunt Fannie Sales that she met her husband-to-be, Morris Harness. He had been working in Chicago for awhile, but had returned and was working in the Heber Springs post office, and came in to Aunt Fannie's occasionally. His parents, Nelle and Roscoe Harness, had lived in Heber Springs for years, and Morris had been raised there. (See separate file entitled "Morris and Betty Harness " for details of Mr. and Mrs. Harness' life together)