If you were to meet my grandmother, you would not know that once she was the captain of her high school basketball team, or that she has lived through several wars, the Great Depression, and had two children. You wouldn’t know that Jenneta Lee McCasland Howard was her parent’s seventh child, or that she graduated from high school at age sixteen. There are many interesting and unique personal histories in the world, and we need to know these stories. Jenny Howard’s life is one of them.

My name [was] Jenneta Lee McCasland, [and]* I was born October 4^th, 1927. My mother’s name was Virgie Faye, and my father’s name was Francis Asbury, and I was their seventh child. Their first two babies died when they were just teeny, and their third child was born with a heart condition and she died when she was twenty one. Actually, [when I was born], I had [three older brothers] named Arnold, Melvin, and Alan, an older sister named Lois, a sister named Lorene, and a sister named Jewel. But then later I had Ladine, Peggy, and Faye younger than I, so we had a big family. Mother had twelve children all together, and raised ten. So I grew up with six sisters and three brothers. Nine children [excluding me]…we didn’t have to invite anybody to have a party. We had enough to have our own party. We lived in the country near Wetumka, Oklahoma. We lived out on a lease on the county about ten miles from town, and Daddy worked for Sinclair Oil Company.

[My dad was called] a head roustabout. He was in charge of all the…uh, fields in the area. He traveled a lot checking out all those (oil lines) in his little pick up truck. [Since] Dad worked for Sinclair, work and his paychecks and everything remained the same [through the Depression]. So we actually did well then. Since Dad still got a paycheck and all he was able to, even though we had a large family of our own, he was able to help a lot of the neighbors around us. They were desperate, you know. They had nothing, so…we were able to help people out. I know my dad gave money to some of them. Like at Christmas time there was a family [who] lived up the road from us that had two or three little children and had no money. I know Dad took them, oh, a bushel of apples and stuff, [and] money so they could buy toys for their children. [They worked at] the Philips plant. It was over, just a couple miles from us. I was born in 1927, so when the Depression hit in 1929, I’m sure I was unaware. My dad worked for Sinclair Oil Co, and he continued to receive the same salary. So, my family was not as personally affected as were the farmers. I do not really remember anything about it--only what I have been told. I know that there was a farmer near us who shot himself after he lost his farm. He just didn’t know anything else. [So my childhood was pretty easy, pretty happy].

[There are so many childhood memories]. I think my favorite was family time. In the evening, many times our special thing was to make fudge. My older sister always made the fudge, and it was real important just how long you cooked it before you started beating it. Sometimes she didn’t do that quite right, so we often had to eat it with a spoon instead of cutting it. That was Lou that did that. But we had so much fun, we popped pop corn. We just had fun, you know, at home. My sister Ladene and I always enjoyed playing “house” with our dolls. We played in Mother’s washhouse, made fancy mud pies in jar lids, iced with flour mixed with water and colored with anything we could find, decorated with little wild flowers. We also played jacks, marbles, jump rope, spun tops, plus group games of tag, hide and seek, [and] Red Rover.

My mother stayed at home [but] she worked! She had a houseful of children all the time, so she really worked; but she never worked “out,” [outside of the home]. My chores as a child mainly consisted of doing dishes--we never had an automatic dishwasher, of course. My sister and I stacked, washed, and dried dishes after each meal, and always swept the kitchen--that was a part of “cleaning up the kitchen.” And the only work that any of my family ever did was like, the kids sometimes picked cotton for a neighboring farmer or something. I never was much at that. I tried picking cotton one time. It didn’t go very well. I picked, I thought at least a hundred pounds, and when I weighed in, it was thirty-six pounds! So I figured I could help the war effort some other way.

The war was really frightening to me and my friends. My brother, Arnold, went into the service as a Sea Bee. I wrote him all the time, I wrote back and forth and he sent me little presents and stuff. My older brother Alan was in the Navy. He was an officer in the Navy. So it was…it was scary for us, although we didn’t know as much about it as we know about the war now because we didn’t have television back then. My dad would stay glued to the radio and listen to the news when my brothers were [gone], ‘cause that was the only information we had. Of course, life was different for everyone during the war. Many young men left high school to go into some branch of the military. [My brothers were in the service]. Many women joined the work force in place of men who were in the armed forces, and as it was a matter of necessity, it was not only accepted, but appreciated.

Of course we had rationing. We had to have stamps to buy sugar. You know, I don’t know how [it was] determined how many you got. But we had to buy a stamp to buy sugar. We learned to cook with syrup for sweetening cakes and I used to make cakes for our school lunches. Mother had gotten a recipe that used Karo syrup instead of sugar, so I used to change it up. I kept using different food coloring and made it a different color each time. That worked pretty well, I mean, at least it gave us a little variation. Except that when I made a green [cake] one time, my dad wouldn’t eat it. Gas was rationed too. You know, people didn’t do a lot of traveling because you only had so much gasoline that you could buy. There were lots of things that were unavailable. I mean, you couldn’t get a lot of different kinds of meat. And shoes…yeah, lots of things. Nylons… a lot of things were just unavailable because of the war.

I started playing basketball probably in about fourth grade, and played until my senior year of high school. We went to state my senior year. We didn’t win, but we went to state. We went to regionals several times. Our girl’s team was really good. I was the captain of the team my senior year. [In 1944] I graduated from high school. [Because I had gone to a little country school] I skipped several grades.

I was sixteen when I graduated from high school! That’s…too young. It was too young to get a job. You had to be eighteen to get a job. Except, I went to California to my sister’s. They owned a supermarket out there. All of the guys were gone off to war and they couldn’t get anyone to work for ‘em, so I worked in their supermarket for three or four months while I was out there. It was good for all of us. I never really had a job until after I graduated from high school in 1944. I was sixteen years old--seventeen in October of that year. There were no jobs around Wetumka, where we lived, so I went to Oklahoma City. My best friend, Wilma Evans, and I rented a room from a lady whose husband was overseas. I went to work as an inventory clerk for Mack Truck Company for about a year, and then worked as a secretary for Rite-Way Products Company. I took dictation from Mr. Allin, branch manager, and from Mr. Allmendinger, office manager. I left Rite-Way and went to work for Delaney Distributing Company for Mr. Lacy, department manager. I met [my husband] when I moved to Oklahoma City and started working. That’s how we met, at a coffee shop. He was very cute. He was eighteen then, the manager of a supermarket. I don’t really remember his proposing to me, [we were just having a conversation, and he asked me to marry him.]
“So, I think we should get married,” he said.

And I probably said, “I think so too.”

The only difficulty [my husband] and I had when we first married was financial. It took us a while, as we started with nothing material. We had no family adjustments, as [he] had no close family, and was quickly adopted into my family.

[Cooking has always been a big part of life for our family]. About the only cooking I did at home was to put on a pot of beans or peel potatoes. I did make lots of cakes, as that’s what we took in our school lunches, and also Mother taught us all to make biscuits. After I married, I pretty much “learned by doing” and had fun trying new things, although [my husband] was a pretty picky eater. He didn’t like fish or chicken, so I did lots of things with ground beef, ham, pork chops, etc. We enjoyed Mexican food a lot; and I guess my favorite thing to make is still tacos and other Mexican dishes. Although my true favorite is still a big pot of vegetable beef stew just like my mother always made. I don’t really have a “secret recipe.” I’ve always enjoyed sharing recipes with family and friends.

[My life has seen] the advent of some significant things. The most significant would be Pearl Harbor, and World War II, [and] everything that went on during the war. And then the wonderful peace that came after it was all over. And the advent of television. That was a pretty exciting thing. It started with a test pattern on a screen and now has come to big screen color television, and all this live, you know, events and everything that’s possible, which they told us someday might be possible. It seemed so far fetched, that we thought, “Hmmm…maybe.” And like, the telephone. We had a wall phone that cranked and it was a party line. [The technology] has come a long way.

[But I don’t think that I would change anything about my experiences.] I am so pleased with the way my life turned out; I’d hate to think that I would change anything about it. Although, I do think that if I had [chosen to go to college] I would have had broader concepts. I could have gone to college. It would have been difficult financially for my dad to send me to college, but I could have gone. But it was during the war, and jobs were plentiful; and I could just see going to work and making my own way. I was eager to do that too; but, I don’t think that I would change anything. I’m very happy.

I have a wonderful family and that’s the main thing. With my daughter and her husband and two children and her two grandchildren, and my son and his wife and three lovely daughters that are so special to me and special in my life. I’m lucky that I get to share their lives and attend their [events]. I’m so fortunate to have [them] here in [Pittsburg] with me. I appreciate that.

Interview Conducted By: Margot Howard Spring 2004

* [ ] indicates words added for clarity