Working in Paterson

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Working in Paterson

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Item Title

"It was her responsibility to peel the potatoes and put them on the stove, and then she would prepare dinner for the kids."

Author/Creator

Interviewer: Levitas, Susan, 1961-

Created/Published

August 28, 1994

Notes

Interview with Edgar Ramsey, owner, Sweet Potato Pie Company.
Summary of audio segment: (Separation between work and home?) It wasn't easy, but even with Xerox it wasn't easy; my wife, "Here she had a newborn baby and when she came home, her first responsibility was not so much to cook -- to prepare the dinner -- but to get the potatoes on. So, it was her responsibility to peel the potatoes and put them on the stove to cook, and then she would prepare dinner for the kids . . . the baby would be crying, she was hungry and my wife says, 'Well, you've got to wait until I get these potatoes peeled.' And so by the time they finished cooking, on an average day, I would be home by then and so I would start mixing the batter, but there were times when we might've had functions at Xerox or something and, you know, I wouldn't get home until ten at night or eleven at night, but you still had to mix that batter because the potatoes were ready." It wasn't easy, but we hung in there and we stuck to it. We knew that one day it would pay off. My wife and I have a very close bond and work well together; no drawbacks or negative aspects or liabilities to having a family business; we only had two people, that's not bad. We knew that this was what we wanted to do, so it wasn't a problem.

Subjects

African Americans
Hours of labor
Interviews
Oral history
Sound recordings
Food industry
Pies
Family-run businesses
Foodways
Work processes
Ethnography
Interviews
United States--New Jersey--Paterson
Sweet Potato Pie Company

Object Type

sound recording-nonmusical

Related Names

Narrator: Ramsey, Edgar

Medium

Digital Audio Tape

Language

English

Call Number

AFC 1995/028: WIP-SL-A020; A: 00:48:16

Reproduction Number

AFC 1995/028: WIP-SL-A020

Part of

Working in Paterson Folklife Project

Repository

Library of Congress, Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

Digital ID

afcwip sla02010
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/afcwip.sla02010