Speaker 1: And we returned to our American stories. Up next, a
Speaker 1: story on the trailblazing woman who's lived her life to
Speaker 1: the fullest. Here's our own Monty Montgomery. To get us started.
Speaker 2: Rebecca Cubby Hall is a firecracker. She's been mayor in
Speaker 2: the Army, a teacher, and at one point owned a
Speaker 2: liquor store, which is important for some context in regards
Speaker 2: to the story she's about to tell. Here's Cobby.
Speaker 3: My sister in Saint Louis has always been religious, and
Speaker 3: I went to Saint Louis years ago to visit with her,
Speaker 3: and they were going church, and the church was a big, old,
Speaker 3: old building, and I was shocked because I thought they'd
Speaker 3: be in one of these big, fancy cathedral type things.
Speaker 3: But it wasn't. It was an old building but had
Speaker 3: a big congregation. And the Sunday school class was on
Speaker 3: alcohol drinking, and I thought, boy, I've been set up here.
Speaker 3: And then the sermon was on selling alcohol, and I
Speaker 3: knew I'd had it then. And I was sitting right
Speaker 3: next to my sister and I let it go on
Speaker 3: and on. He went on and on and on, and
Speaker 3: pretty soon I just stood up. I said, may I
Speaker 3: say something yes, you may. Well. I wound up talking
Speaker 3: twenty minutes, and I couldn't find any place to shut up.
Speaker 3: I said, you know, God says he didn't want you
Speaker 3: to mistreat your body because you belonged to him. I said,
Speaker 3: look at the people in here, all too heavy, their
Speaker 3: teeth needed repair. I just went on and on and on,
Speaker 3: and so finally I sat down and they clapped, and
Speaker 3: the preacher thanked me for doing that. So when he
Speaker 3: finished his sermon, and I sat right next to my sister,
Speaker 3: and she didn't say a word. And so when he
Speaker 3: was finished, I thought, boy, I got to get out
Speaker 3: of here, and I rushed back to the door, but
Speaker 3: he beat me back there, and he grabbed my hand
Speaker 3: and patted it and patted it and thanked me and
Speaker 3: went on. And I stood right there and shook hands
Speaker 3: with every three person that came out of that church.
Speaker 3: And then we went to my sister's house and I
Speaker 3: got punished there.
Speaker 2: How he was born in August of nineteen thirty four.
Speaker 3: It hasn't been many years ago that I had lived
Speaker 3: longer without electricity than I had lived with it. And
Speaker 3: my grandfather homestead, and then he had brothers and sisters
Speaker 3: and my dad, and they kind of cut it up
Speaker 3: and let everybody have a piece of it. And my
Speaker 3: dad they gave the old farmhouse he was born in there.
Speaker 3: I was born in that farmhouse. And when I was born,
Speaker 3: my dad worked on the highway and he had a
Speaker 3: team of mules and he had to leave, and of
Speaker 3: course he couldn't come home every night because they'd be
Speaker 3: too far with mules to come. But he always told
Speaker 3: my mother to take care of the cub bear, and
Speaker 3: that's how I got the name Cobby. And right next
Speaker 3: to or we had what we called the garage, but
Speaker 3: it had a dadded butcher, and we always took the
Speaker 3: bladder of the pig and cleaned it good and blow
Speaker 3: it up and use it for it lasts for weeks.
Speaker 3: You use it for a volleyball and what have you.
Speaker 3: And we had chickens, and we always had chicken for
Speaker 3: lunch on Sunday and we go to church. But before
Speaker 3: we went to church, it was my job to get
Speaker 3: the chicken ready early. And I'd go catch a chicken
Speaker 3: and put a board across its head and bull on
Speaker 3: its feet and pull.
Speaker 4: Its head off and hold it down and sometimes let
Speaker 4: it flop around but I had a hot water out
Speaker 4: there and scalded it, you know, pluck it, and then
Speaker 4: i'd take it in the house after I got it
Speaker 4: cleaned and after we washed it real good mom.
Speaker 3: And let it soak in salt water while we went
Speaker 3: to church. But that was always my job, and that
Speaker 3: was just there's nothing to it. Just grab that chicken
Speaker 3: and take care of it. Off we'd go to Sunday
Speaker 3: school then. But I wasn't the only one. Everybody around
Speaker 3: here did the same thing. And we went to town
Speaker 3: on Saturdays. But you let it snow, but we went
Speaker 3: down on Saturday because in town, in New Show, they
Speaker 3: had a truck with a big wire barrel on it
Speaker 3: and they had everybody's name in it, and they'd pull
Speaker 3: out a name and they got one hundred dollar bill
Speaker 3: from the merchants in town. So we never did miss Saturday.
Speaker 3: But we never did get one hundred dollars either. But
Speaker 3: we always Mom always packed a lunch and we went
Speaker 3: in the big spring parked it. It was a good love.
Speaker 3: But I will have to say I was always a
Speaker 3: straight f student grade school through high school. And I
Speaker 3: mean f I was real bashful, couldn't talk or anything,
Speaker 3: but when I started high school freshman year here at Newshaw,
Speaker 3: I had a teacher, missus Dorothy Fall, who realized that
Speaker 3: I wasn't just a moron, and she asked me if
Speaker 3: I would come in on my study hall period and
Speaker 3: clean her room and she would tutor me while I
Speaker 3: was doing that. Well, I was happy, and she had
Speaker 3: the cleanest room in school because I knew how to clean.
Speaker 3: But anyway, later on, after I got old, I ran
Speaker 3: for the city council and really won, and Bob Hayes
Speaker 3: ran that same year, and when our first council meeting,
Speaker 3: they elected me uh mayor pro teum and Bob was mayor.
Speaker 3: And then Bob, I'm sorry to say, had the audacity
Speaker 3: to have a heart attack that night and could not
Speaker 3: be on the council anymore. So I automatically became mayor
Speaker 3: of New Show and then after the first term, I
Speaker 3: was elected mayor the second time. And that's when we
Speaker 3: had that big tornado and my teacher, Dorothy Fall, whom
Speaker 3: I loved. She and her mother lived at the corner
Speaker 3: of Kodiak and Norway, and they were both killed in
Speaker 3: that tornado as it came through there. And I was
Speaker 3: always so proud that she lived to see me become
Speaker 3: mayor because she brought me out of the desk. I'll
Speaker 3: tell you she was a wonderful woman, and that's probably
Speaker 3: the most exciting thing I ever did.
Speaker 1: And you've been listening to Rebecca Cubby Hall tell her story.
Speaker 1: Born in nineteen thirty four, lived a long part of
Speaker 1: her life without electricity. Give you a context that there
Speaker 1: was life before us here in this great country. Take
Speaker 1: care of the cupbear, her father would say to her mother.
Speaker 1: That's how Cubby became her nickname. And it's stuck. And
Speaker 1: by the way, when asked to go get the chicken
Speaker 1: before church, it did not entail a trip to Kroger
Speaker 1: or Pigley Wiggly or Ralph's. It meant get the chicken.
Speaker 1: And anyone who lives a rural life knows what that means.
Speaker 1: Back then, when we come back, more of this unique
Speaker 1: and original voice, but not so unique to you who
Speaker 1: live out in parts of this great country that live
Speaker 1: like this and live in the rural parts of the country,
Speaker 1: especially more with Cubby Hall's story, trailblazing woman here on
Speaker 1: our American story. And we returned to our American stories
Speaker 1: and our story with Rebecca Cubby Hall. When we last
Speaker 1: left off, Kubby was telling us about her upbringing, about
Speaker 1: how terrible the students she'd been straight f's, he said,
Speaker 1: and also told the story about how one teacher changed
Speaker 1: her life, and that teacher, Miss Dorothy Fall, would ultimately
Speaker 1: lose her life to a tornado, but thanks to that
Speaker 1: teacher's intervention, well, Cubby would one day become mayor of Nioshia,
Speaker 1: something she was glad that her teacher got to see
Speaker 1: before that tragedy. Let's turn just a bit back further
Speaker 1: through her teenage years. Here again is Cubby Hall.
Speaker 3: I had a paper route and kept Crowder. Crowder was
Speaker 3: in full swing, about seventy thousand men over there and
Speaker 3: women over there. And that's why I joined the army,
Speaker 3: because I saw those WAX. I didn't know any of them,
Speaker 3: never spoke to one, but I locked the way they looked,
Speaker 3: and that was the Women's Army Corps. There was no
Speaker 3: women's Army then. Nobody now even knows what WAX stands for.
Speaker 2: But Rebecca's mother wasn't too fond of the idea of
Speaker 2: her daughter joining the army.
Speaker 3: Oh I wanted to go so badly, and by her
Speaker 3: not wanting me to probably made me want to do
Speaker 3: it more. But my dad never did say yes, go ahead,
Speaker 3: and my mother never did say no, you can't do it.
Speaker 3: So I did. I joined the army and my dad.
Speaker 3: My mother wouldn't even tell me goodbye. She wouldn't go
Speaker 3: with me to Kin City. My dad took me in.
Speaker 3: I caught the bus. I think it was about ten
Speaker 3: thirty or eleven at night, Greyhound bus, and my dad said, now, Cob,
Speaker 3: don't ever do anything that when it gets down to
Speaker 3: the nitty gritty, you can't tell your ma and me.
Speaker 3: I think about that all the time. I think that's
Speaker 3: the best advice anybody could ever have given a kid.
Speaker 3: But anyway, I went in the army loved I was
Speaker 3: stationed the whole time at Fort Jackson in South Carolina,
Speaker 3: and they there, my commanding officer sent me to Fort Slocum,
Speaker 3: New York, to what they called Troop Information and Education School,
Speaker 3: And that's where I became a teacher, and I taught,
Speaker 3: among other things, I taught how to take it in
Speaker 3: one apartment, clean, put it back together. I taught pe
Speaker 3: and I taught the history of the military and chemical warfare,
Speaker 3: of which I remembered none of it now. But I
Speaker 3: didn't have anyway to go to town ever because of my job.
Speaker 3: The buses didn't run after I got off work. I
Speaker 3: went to work late and got off really late, and
Speaker 3: so I just bought me a motorcycle. I had never
Speaker 3: ever been close to a motorcycle in my whole life,
Speaker 3: never seen one other than just it driving by. But
Speaker 3: I bought a nineteen forty seven Harley Davison. When I
Speaker 3: bought my motorcycle, I went into this shop. I just
Speaker 3: happened to see it when I got off the bus,
Speaker 3: and I told him I bought the best bargain you
Speaker 3: have in this place, and he said, well, it's that
Speaker 3: one right over there. It was a nineteen forty seven
Speaker 3: I can't remember. It wasn't a great big one, but
Speaker 3: it was two hundred dollars. So I paid him cash
Speaker 3: for it. He gave me a receipt and I said, now,
Speaker 3: if you'll show me how to ride it, i'll leave.
Speaker 3: And he said, if I had have known that you
Speaker 3: didn't know to ride that, I wouldn't have sold it
Speaker 3: to you. But he had a big field out behind
Speaker 3: his shop. So we went out there and he showed
Speaker 3: me how you had to change gears with your foot,
Speaker 3: and I rode round and round across that field and
Speaker 3: around it. But I wasn't confident, and I left it
Speaker 3: for about two weeks, and every opportunity I got, I
Speaker 3: went out rode that motorcycle. Of course, we weren't allowed
Speaker 3: to wear pants. We had dresses and Bobby's socks. I
Speaker 3: just took that old dress out of them. In one
Speaker 3: day I was out there. Ride you took about two weeks.
Speaker 3: I just rode out the gate and kept it going.
Speaker 3: Except it was kind of scary at first, but I
Speaker 3: got used to it, loved it, and if I could
Speaker 3: afford it now and we're younger, I'd buy a motorcycle
Speaker 3: right now. It was me. But the only problem I
Speaker 3: ever had with them were the guys in my office.
Speaker 3: There were forty men that worked in my office, and
Speaker 3: they were always wanting to borrow my motorcycle, and I
Speaker 3: let some of them.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't, and.
Speaker 3: I got out of my time, was up re enlisted,
Speaker 3: and they made me get out because I got married.
Speaker 3: Women cannot be married and be in the service. And
Speaker 3: then we came back here and went to college to
Speaker 3: get my ambassador's degree to be an elementary teacher, and
Speaker 3: it only took me nine years because I had jobs
Speaker 3: in between. And the first school I taught in was
Speaker 3: a one room school. I had twenty eight students, boys
Speaker 3: and girls, first grade through eighth grade. Loved every minute
Speaker 3: of it. Did my own challenger work. And we had
Speaker 3: two outside toilets, boys and girls. And my contract read
Speaker 3: that I would scrub the outside toilets with hot soapy
Speaker 3: water every Friday night. We didn't even have running water.
Speaker 3: It was a fun time and uh, I hardly ever
Speaker 3: got to sleep because I was so busy getting lesson
Speaker 3: plans and looking up and doing. And we had a
Speaker 3: set of world books that's how we looked things up.
Speaker 3: And UH to make copies, I had a hectograph machine
Speaker 3: that was like a wooden book. You opened up and
Speaker 3: it had jelly in it, and then you washed that
Speaker 3: jelly and then UH you used an indelible pencil to
Speaker 3: write on paper, and you write that and you wet
Speaker 3: the jelly, put your paper on their rub it, then
Speaker 3: take your paper up and then put a clean sheet
Speaker 3: of paper on it, and that would make one copy.
Speaker 3: Then you had to do that all again, take enough
Speaker 3: copies for however many students you had, and so I was.
Speaker 3: I was constantly making copies, and I couldn't let the
Speaker 3: students do it because I said, see the test if
Speaker 3: it were a worksheet. I did let.
Speaker 2: Him do it, and Rebecca would have her son, Doug
Speaker 2: in the middle of the school year. Becoming a mother
Speaker 2: didn't slow her down, though.
Speaker 3: Doug was born in November and I well, I started
Speaker 3: to school and then I realized, boy, I can't do this.
Speaker 3: So her round went to the hospital and Doug was
Speaker 3: born on Thursday, and I took him to school with
Speaker 3: me on Monday in a clothes basket. So he started
Speaker 3: pretty young, and the younger kids, even boys, would want
Speaker 3: to hold him. Why I was asleep the older girls,
Speaker 3: which said, crucify me for now. But everybody there lived
Speaker 3: on farms and they've blown to four h and everything.
Speaker 3: The older the seventh and eighth grade girls would take
Speaker 3: care of Doug during the day. If he went to sleep,
Speaker 3: we'd let one of the little girls or little boys
Speaker 3: hold it. When I slept. They didn't care for Brodim
Speaker 3: as long as I had school. I did eight years
Speaker 3: in a one room schoolhouse and we had real slate blackboards.
Speaker 3: You could really clean them.
Speaker 2: It should come as no surprise, given her penchant for
Speaker 2: doing the dirty work, so to speak, that Rebecca also
Speaker 2: worked as a garbage woman. She had a unique way
Speaker 2: of handling the job because she couldn't lift the heavy
Speaker 2: bins by hand.
Speaker 3: I ran a house to house and I would get
Speaker 3: the trash can ready because there's always trash around them,
Speaker 3: pick it up and put it in the can, and
Speaker 3: then after the guys would dump it in the truck.
Speaker 3: They just throw the can down on the ground and
Speaker 3: all the trash that's left in it comes out. So
Speaker 3: I would pick all that up and put the lid
Speaker 3: back on it, and people actually came out and they'd
Speaker 3: bring and cookies and ice cream and stuff. Be easy
Speaker 3: to gain weight on a trash route.
Speaker 2: She never stopped teaching, though, even in her work around
Speaker 2: the city.
Speaker 3: I got a grant from the government to get twelve
Speaker 3: high school boys that were in trouble with the law
Speaker 3: and needed their GED, and took them around with me
Speaker 3: and I would sing the multification tables for their GED,
Speaker 3: because there's no way you're going to make those boys
Speaker 3: sit down and work for their GED. And one of
Speaker 3: them actually became the superintendent of the Superintendent of the
Speaker 3: Streets in Yosho. After that, those boys were a pleasure
Speaker 3: to work with, really a pleasure. We never had any
Speaker 3: problems at all. I ain't afraid of anybody or anything.
Speaker 3: I've done it all.
Speaker 1: A special thanks to Katrina Hine and Monty Montgomery for
Speaker 1: the work on that story, and a special thanks to
Speaker 1: Cubby Hall. The story of Rebecca cubby Hall, trailblazing woman
Speaker 1: here on our American Story