SANDY McCOY, JR.:  It’d been 20 at the most, you know, and that’s giving a couple.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  They were large families.

 

SULLIVAN: And most of them were related one way or another?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Uh-huh.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  A lot of them were, yeah.

 

JOANN McCOY:  Because in the Bells’ house, what, there were 10 of them, Miss Lena Bell had 10.  Mama had 6.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Miss Pollard and them had 10 or 12.

 

JOANN McCOY:  They had 12.  I think that’s what she told me the other day.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  See, and some of them once they got older got homes and were living in the same area.

 

JERRY McCOY:  There is some people out there that we really forgot about.  I can’t even recall their names.  I’ve been trying to think of their names.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Like who?

 

JERRY McCOY:  They lived up there behind  the Bells.  They used to associate with the Bells all the time.

 

JOANN McCOY:  They lived behind the Bells?

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah.  Up there—up there going up top of that hill.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Nobody up there, there wasn’t nobody.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Jennings, some Jennings lived out there.  Jennings.  Now, they lived going up the hill.  (referring to hand-drawn map)  The Jennings lived here going up this hill.

 

JOANN McCOY:  By the Bells.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Bells lived here (pointing).

 

JERRY McCOY:  Well, I know it, but I’m saying it’s back here, but they lived going up here.

 

SULLIVAN: The Jennings lived over here (pointing to hand-drawn map)?

 

JERRY McCOY:  Right.  In other words, the Jennings’ house was facing the back of the Bells’ house.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  So this is Bells.  They here or here?

 

JERRY McCOY:  Back, back here (pointing).

 

SULLIVAN: So that’s the Jennings’ house.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Jennings, and here’s Bells.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Uh-huh.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  And McLemores.  So you get—not going—

 

JERRY McCOY:  Actually, they was here because y’all’s drawing is off.

 

(Laughing)

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  When you left our house, you go straight up the street to the church.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  To the church.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah.  We—

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  And I know somebody lived up here.

 

JERRY McCOY:  No.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  And this street here, like I said, behind Mr. Leroy and them house, it wasn’t—that’s where you’re going back toward KBOX was back down that—behind that—their house.  All the rest of them lived up here.  We used to play in here in front of Miss Pollard and them house.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Jerry, what you drawing?

 

JERRY McCOY:  My house.

 

JOANN McCOY:  Lefty (laughing).  Where your house at?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Where did you stay?

 

JOANN McCOY:  Where did you stay (laughing)?

 

JERRY McCOY:  I’m fixing to show you.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Okay.

 

JERRY McCOY:  (referring to hand-drawn map)  This is our house here, McCoy.  Then you went up here—

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Right.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Then you made a left.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Right.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Then this is the Dotsy’s house, they lived right in that corner.  Then you went up the top of the hill up here.  Now, our house, you go up top of the hill, you still going top of the hill, on up here to the church.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Yeah.

 

JERRY McCOY:  To the church.  All right.  Now, it was houses along here.  Now, here going up through here was the—was the—was the McLemores—

 

GLORIA McCOY:  That’s where—right there.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  They went out this way. The church was up here.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Right, right. 

 

GLORIA McCOY:  So we already got that.

 

JERRY McCOY:  What I’m showing y’all how it went up the top of this hill.  And there were some Jennings lived in here.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Okay.  Well, then, they had to go in there between—before you get to the church.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Right.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  So they had to be—it was Mr. Leroy, Miss Annie Northington—

 

SULLIVAN: So those people were living along this street here (pointing)?

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  No.

 

JERRY McCOY:  They were living here.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Because you saying that the Jennings lived in here somewhere, but you’re saying their house was facing the back of the—back of the Bells.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Most of y’all’s—y’all got it right, except the houses kind of—the street kind of like this (motioning on the map), and theirs went like this (indicating).  Because you went to Miss Dotsy house, then from Miss Dotsy house, it was a straight line going up top of that hill to the church.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  It was a straight line going by Mr. Pollard and them house going straight up to the church.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah.

 

JOANN McCOY:  From our house.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  From our house, you went straight up that hill.

 

JERRY McCOY:  From the bottom of the hill.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  You went off one way to go to (inaudible) and them houses and you went one way to go to Miss Dotsy and them house.  And the rest of them houses Miss Northington and them really lived up in here.  And then we went on up to these here Peoples’ house to the church.  I don’t think no street was running in the back there.

 

JERRY McCOY:  You come off this hill, and you just come right on down into our house off the top of the hill from the church.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  But we’re trying to see where the Jennings lived.

 

JERRY McCOY:  The Jennings and them lived in here someplace, and I don’t know where exactly, but they lived in there.  That was another—what I’m trying to do is get all the people was on the hill.  The Jennings lived out there.

 

JOANN McCOY:  Okay.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  How many was in their family, Jerry?

 

JERRY McCOY:  A bunch of them.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  I can’t remember them.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2:   The houses that you’ve made here go up sort of a curve, right?

 

McCOY SIBLINGS:  Uh-huh.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: So they correspond to the houses here, and you said the church was here?

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah.  The church is at the top of the hill.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: So there was a path going to the right with all of these houses that correspond to these people?

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Uh-huh.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: And then there was a curved path going up—up—sort of curved to the church, and there were houses that correspond—but in the middle, as you drew here (pointing to hand-drawn map), there was a dirt road going—

 

JERRY and SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Right, right.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  And that wasn’t the street they really lived on because Mr. Dotsy and them were down here by themself.  They were, like, in the corner down here by themself.  And these houses here, they was up here at the top of this hill here.

 

JERRY McCOY:  When we come out of Mr. Bell and them house, you walked straight out the back door to the Jennings’ house or to the church.

 

SULLIVAN: That’d be like, going—

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  That would put them over here.

 

JERRY McCOY:  No, they was on this—over there (inaudible).

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Jerry, look how far that is.  It’s three blocks over.

 

JOANN McCOY:  Jerry, you keep saying the back of Miss Lena Bell and them and—

 

GLORIA McCOY:  You could look at the church from Miss Lena Bell’s house.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  You’re saying Bell.  You didn’t say nothing about Uncle Buddy and them, McLemore.  They couldn’t come out the back of their house, too.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Medea.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Medea, any of them house you can come out the back.  You go across the field, there wasn’t no streets.

 

(Simultaneous talking)

 

JERRY McCOY:  A road going through the field.  This wasn’t nothing but field out here.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Right, right.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  But you had—

 

JERRY McCOY:  And you crossed that field and go to these people house or go up there to the church.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2:  (pointing to photo) This field right here, right?

 

JERRY McCOY:  Right.

 

1. SULLIVAN: This is it (pointing to photo)?

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2:  Yeah, this is it.  Because this corresponds to the back of their house—

 

JERRY McCOY:  That’s right.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2:  But it also goes towards the curve that you guys are mentioning.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Yeah.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1:  I think it’s all just different points of view.

 

(Simultaneous talking)

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: So it was fields, but I’m guessing, because of the maps, that there were also paved—dirt roads between those fields.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah.  Don’t you say nothing about no paved.

 

(Laughing)

 

JERRY McCOY:  Trails, yeah, that’s what it was.  Dirt trails.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: Trails going within the field, right?

 

McCOY SIBLINGS:  Right, right.

 

JERRY McCOY:  That you drove down.  And that’s when it get muddy, you couldn’t drive that.  You had to park your car and walk.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: So it seems like—

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2:  So you guys lived here (pointing to photo).  This is the Peoples, and this is the houses that you’ve marked towards the side.  This is the houses that that you’ve marked towards the curve, and this is the trail that you said was in the middle?

 

McCOY SIBLINGS:  Yeah, right.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: That went all the way up to the church.

 

McCOY SIBLINGS:  Right.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Right here.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1:  I think we’ve got a great idea.  I think the worst part is is that it was on a hill, so we have different points of view.  I think you guys have got it right, and I definitely think we’ll use this.

 

JERRY McCOY:  That trail we’re talking about going to the top of the hill, it came right side the church, all the way down the hill to our house.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1:  Okay, perfect.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Have y’all ever been over there in that area?

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1:  I have, yes.  I went yesterday.  And it’s funny because I actually used to live right near there, and I used to drive by there all the time.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Because now across the street is a high-rise from where we stayed.

 

SULLIVAN: Yes, yes.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And you go up, it’s a bank or something up there now.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Oh, yeah?

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Right.  We lived—

 

GLORIA McCOY:  For the long—our pecan tree stayed there for a long time.  When we went the other time, we couldn’t find it.

 

JOANN McCOY:  Because the pecan tree was right there at the back, say, the back of the house, the driveway, out to the driveway.  I would try to find that pecan tree, and then we had a white fence there, like, say, what was the alley, because (inaudible name) and them used to hide up in there when they wanted to go home.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  And that was a marker, that pecan tree.  It was still there years after we moved from out there, but it was still there.

 

JOANN McCOY:  That huge pecan tree.  That was, like, back of the house.  And our driveway kind of—

 

(Simultaneous talking)

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  I built a treehouse in that tree (laughing).

 

JOANN McCOY:  I used to be a tomboy, and I climbed up there and saw a snake, and Daddy came and got me and that was the end of my climbing, that was the end of that.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  See, because this is where we was—that’s what’s out there now (showing photo that’s on her e-device).  And, see, we lived over in that area.  And I was trying to find out tree—

 

JERRY McCOY:  That pecan tree that was in our backyard.

 

JOANN McCOY:  It was huge, huge.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Because that’s the—

 

JERRY McCOY:  I sat up in there all day one trying to get a little nerve to jump from one limb to another limb.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Because that’s  the Army reserve. It even look different than when we were there, that Army reserve.  It look different now.  It looked like it was huge back then.  It don’t look as huge now.

 

JERRY McCOY:  And when I got up enough nerve, I jumped and missed it.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Right, yeah.  It was small (inaudible).  We’d slip in there and play in them tanks there.  Go (inaudible) the fence when they was building it.

 

JOANN McCOY:  He got into a lot of stuff.

 

SULLIVAN: Those are good stories. We should get some of those stories about how you—

 

JERRY McCOY:  (inaudible) got a whipping every day, too.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: Yeah.  Any other stories that you can remember that you want to share with us, you’re free to.

 

JOANN McCOY:  And what was the man right there on the corner?  You can talk about Daddy’s—the chicken that would crow early in the morning, chickens, you can talk about the chicken crow early and wake him up.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  (Showing photo on e-device to Sandy).  Our pecan tree, was that our tree?  Because that tree’s still there.  It’s not as—you know, the pecan tree was huge.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Right.  The pecan tree was huge.  This…

 

GLORIA McCOY:  That’s right there where we lived, that tree is.  Joann say it was like at the driveway where Daddy’s truck was.  I don’t remember that.

 

JOANN McCOY:  The people lived on the corner, right across the street from us on the corner, you know, we stayed on one corner, then there’s Ferndale, and then there was a house on the corner, came right up to the pavement.  Who were those people?

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2:  We’ve got great material for the maps, thank you so much.  What I want to ask you next is the social events in the community.  And you mentioned something about dancing?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  They would have square dancing at the Army Reserve, we’d just be standing across the street looking at them.  They’d be square dancing.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  That wasn’t our cup of tea.

 

JERRY McCOY:  No.  They was talking—he was talking about y’all at KBOX.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Every year KBOX would throw something up here—

 

GLORIA McCOY:  At the Northlake Shopping Center.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  —at that shopping center.  Be playing music, have dance contests, stuff like this here.  We used to go up there.  Your clubs and stuff, where did y’all go (looking at Jerry)?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  All our activities was mainly at school.  You know, we would go to the school because we attended all the football games, basketball games, and that was at Hamilton Park. So that’s what most all of us would go to the activities at the school.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Jerry, where was that y’all used to go when they’d go up there on Skillman and Northwest Highway and they had clubs up there?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  For adults?

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Uh-huh.

 

SULLIVAN: Did you have any—do you remember any members of the community who were particularly politically active or they were really active in the community, enjoyed setting up, like, events?

 

JERRY McCOY:  No, no.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1:  So they were mainly outside events that you guys went to?

 

McCOY SIBLINGS:  Right, right.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And then the other thing would be at the church, you know, all our Christmas programs and stuff would be at the church.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: Do you have any stories that you remember?

 

JERRY McCOY:  The church was the center of our  lives.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Oh, yeah.  We had the Tom Thumb wedding.  Junior (pointing to Sandy) was the preacher and I was the bride.

 

(Laughing)

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Charles Walker.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Yeah.  And Charles, he was my husband.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Yeah.  I had me a big Abraham Lincoln hat and black robe and everything.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Wasn’t he Johnny Appletree or Applebee.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Uh-huh.

 

JERRY McCOY:  I don’t remember all that.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And Medea played, yeah. 

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Medea, she was the—

 

JOANN McCOY:  My grandmother played the piano.

 

JERRY McCOY:  My grandmother, she played at the church, she was a musician.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Pianist.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Annie T. Robinson, she was a musician.

 

SULLIVAN: That was your grandmother on your mother’s side?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  She was a musician.

 

SULLIVAN: That was on your…

 

JERRY McCOY:  Mother.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And Miss Annie Northington, she was with William, she was over the Youth Department at church, Sunday school teacher, and did all our Christmas programs, Easter programs, whatever, it was always her.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  My mother’s mother.  Moses and Sarah Robinson were her mother and father.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And she was the only one that had a color TV.  I remember her color TV.

 

JERRY McCOY:  A color TV where she done put some kind of screen over it and made it look colorful.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  It was colorful, you know, it was just something she put on there.  So we always said she had the only color TV in the area; the rest of us had black and white.

 

(Jerry McCoy leaves.)

 

JOANN McCOY:  And we had the only phone in the area, because everybody got their phone calls at our house.  We would just “hold on,” and you run off to the house and get Miss Lena Bell or you run up to—

 

SULLIVAN: So there was a community—there was one phone for the community?

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2:  And where was the phone line for…

 

JOANN McCOY:  We have no idea, but we had a phone.

 

(Simultaneous talking about the phone.  Mention of a party line)

 

SULLIVAN: You had a party line?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  I think we had a party line.

 

JOANN McCOY:  I know we had the only phone for a while, because somebody would get a call, “okay.” And you run up the hill or run next door and go and get them, and they would come to the phone.  And we didn’t lock our door when we come home from school, just come in the house.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And the insurance man came every Sunday after church for dinnertime to eat.  We had, like, life insurance, and he would come to collect.  But he’d come every Sunday, and he knew what time to come because we was eating, and he would eat with us.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Then you had the Watkins man, he would come out and sell all of these…

 

JOANN McCOY:  Sell that liniment.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  All these liniments and products.  Come through the neighborhood.  We had the scavenger, he—one day he’d come out and empty the outhouses.

 

(Jerry McCoy returns.)

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2:  Nearby, were there any other black areas of settlement that you knew about?

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Next one was—close to town—

 

GLORIA McCOY:  The Fields.

 

JERRY McCOY:  The Fields—

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  The Heard, they was down there on Skillman.

 

JERRY McCOY:  The Fields was a community, they called it the Fields.  And that was located off of Skillman and Church Road.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  See, and those people came to Little Egypt for church services.  They didn’t live there, but they came there for church.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Because there wasn’t no church in their community.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And they went to Hamilton Park.

 

JERRY McCOY:  And they also went to Hamilton Park.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  We’d go through there and pick them up, or they come, you know, pick us up.

 

JERRY McCOY:  And then there was other families that lived back out through there, right on Church Road, Audelia Road, all back out in there, on Skillman, and all of them come together and we went to Hamilton Park or that went to church over there at Egypt.

 

JOANN McCOY:  Were we picked up first?  Did Mr. Love pick us up first, did he have anybody on the bus that he picked up first?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  I think we were first.

 

JOANN McCOY:  I think we were first, too.

 

JERRY McCOY:  The only community over there in that area that had a black church was Egypt.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  But they was the only one—you was asking were there ones near us, any others, and they were near us.  The other one was almost in Garland.  The Walkers and them, they was in Garland.  That was the only other…

 

JOANN McCOY:  And the Peoples went to Garland after (inaudible).  When did the Peoples move?  Did they move before we did?

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah, they moved way before we did.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  They moved to Hamilton Park.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah, they moved to Hamilton Park.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: Real quick just going back to recreation.  We had another question:  Where did you and your family spend most of your leisure time, free time?

 

JOANN McCOY:  At the Starlite Drive-In.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  We would go to the movies.  And we had to go to South Dallas to the drive-in theater.

 

JERRY McCOY:  You remember, there wasn’t no integration going on then.  I couldn’t walk across the street to the movies.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And it was the Starlite Drive-In and the Cinderella Drive-In.  And it was off of Hatcher and Lamar in South Dallas.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Starlite and Cinderella, they were next-door to each other.

 

JERRY McCOY:  At one time that you couldn’t go to the Cinderella, you went to the Starlite.  The Cinderella was the white and the Starlite was the black.  Then they combined the both of them together.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  I don’t remember that.

 

JOANN McCOY:  We would do both of them.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Yeah, I remember that.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And we knew we was close to the drive-in because down Hatcher was some duplexes, and we knew we was close to the drive-in then.  And we would carry our own drinks, our own popcorn and everything.  And we would get out and sit in front of the cars, we’d take our blankets and all of that to sit outside instead of sit up in—

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Make our own ice cream, churn it.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Yeah, made our own ice cream.

 

JERRY McCOY:  And then over in Fields, they had what they called a community center, and a lot of times they would do activities over there at the community center in the Fields community.

 

JOANN McCOY:  Do y’all remember Daddy would drive us back—

 

JERRY McCOY:  Most of us, most of the kids, we—

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Here’s our youngest brother, George.

 

(George McCoy enters the room)

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: Hello.

 

GEORGE McCOY:  How y’all doing?

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: How are you.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Most of us was involved—the kids probably involved with more things with going on at the school as far as the dancing and the football games and—and whatever you had, they had it there at Hamilton Park.  Yeah, they had it at Hamilton Park.  And that’s where we did a lot of our activities.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  (pointing to article in small blue-covered booklet) And there’s where we (inaudible) other families—community Fields, tell you the names.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Although at one time I remember us having a hay ride out there.

 

(George McCoy leaves the room)

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: Did you have friends that lived outside of Little Egypt, and if they did, where did they live?

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Well, we had relatives and cousins.  We had cousins that lived out here.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And the friends that we had were the friends that was at school, so then they lived in their own area, you know, we lived there, so most of our outside friends were classmates or other relatives.  We had a bunch of them.  And they lived in, like—was living out here in this area in North Dallas.

 

SULLIVAN: This area.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Right.  And Daddy’s brother and sisters and their families was living out here.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Sisters and brothers all lived out here in this area at the time.

 

SULLIVAN: Was this area called anything? Did it have any kind of a name to it?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  We always say on the other side of—

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Elm Thicket.

 

SULLIVAN: It was called what?

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Elm Thicket.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And we said this part was North Fork.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Elm Thicket was named after a patch of elm trees or something.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: You talked about sharecropping early on in the interview.  What did you—what was grown?

 

JERRY McCOY:  We didn’t do anything.  We didn’t do that.  But it was mostly—

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Did you pick cotton here?

 

JERRY McCOY:  If I did—one day.  I cried to go out there— (end of Video Pt. 3) with my grandmother and them and I cried to come home, and I ain’t been back out there since.  But that was back in the day.  I rode along with Daddy.  But we growed—we grew a lot of our food.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2:  What kind?

 

JERRY McCOY:  We had a garden, had chickens, had hogs.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Cows.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Had cow.  Just whatever you wanted to eat, you could pretty well eat it then.

 

JOANN McCOY:  Go to the backyard and get that chicken.

 

JERRY McCOY:  A lot of times, the family would get together and have a hog killing.  That’s where they get the hog and they bring them down and everybody get together and scrape the hog after they kill him.  They used to—

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  (inaudible) everybody in the neighborhood had food.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Everybody had food.  You would cure your meat and hang it in what you call a smokehouse.  And you get ready to eat, you’d go out there and cut you off piece of ham down in the smokehouse.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  And go get your eggs out of the henhouse.

 

SULLIVAN: So it was like a community, the whole little area.

 

JERRY McCOY:  And you go to the garden and get your vegetables that you want to eat.

 

SULLIVAN: So it was like a community garden?

 

JERRY McCOY:  No, it wasn’t a community garden.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  No, everybody just had one.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Everybody had a garden.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Everybody had their own.

 

SULLIVAN: Had their own garden?

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Because like I said, we lived (inaudible)

 

JERRY McCOY:  We wasn’t, like, sitting right on top of each other.  I guess the closest people that lived together was us and Miss Frankie May.  The next house might be that house over…

 

JOANN McCOY:  And, see, Miss Frankie May would give us eggs over the fence.  She was right next door.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Right over here to the next block to the next house.

 

JERRY McCOY:  And, see, a lot of times Mom and them would be out and they would bring the food from different stores home.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And then we would share.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: So what did you guys prefer to eat?

 

JERRY McCOY:  Anything that walked in.

 

(laughter)

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Because we didn’t eat a lot of junk food.  Mama cooked every day, whole milk, beans.

 

SULLIVAN: And then after church, what did—

 

(Simultaneous talking)

 

SULLIVAN: Did you ever have, like, a big church meal afterwards on Sunday that all the church members go to?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Now, we had, like, the church’s birthday and everything else, all the families would prepare dinner, we would eat on the church grounds.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  They would call it (End of Pt 4) dinner on the grounds.

 

(Simultaneous talking)

 

SULLIVAN: On the grounds?

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Called it dinner on the grounds.

 

JOANN McCOY:  That would have been more like the church’s birthday or anniversary.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Just set up tables.

 

SULLIVAN: Oh, okay.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Set up long tables outside, and everybody’d bring something.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Bring some food and set some tables up, man you could eat all day.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Have a good time.  Play games.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Play all kind of games.  Just have a ball.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: What games?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  We’d jump rope, hopscotch, pop the whip.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  (inaudible) sack race and all of this.  Apples, you know how you put apples in the bucket and—bob for apples.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Then you had ball games, softball games and baseball games.

 

SULLIVAN: Inside your—but that would be in your community.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  In that area, yeah.

Because that little field up between us—between the People and our house, we played football there.  It was a wide-open field.  And I was telling my brother all of us that were around the same age we got a—at Christmas we had—our parents got us football uniforms, we got football suits. And that Christmas we were out there playing football, and we all dressed up as football players.  Billops, he come a-running and I hit him, I went in there and hit him, and that helmet shattered. 

 

(Laughter)

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Busted their helmet.  That string inside, all that come loose.  He didn’t—you talking about head was ringing.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  No concussions (laughing).

 

JERRY McCOY:  Probably had a whole bunch of concussions.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Yes, we did.  Yeah, I got one, what hit me?

 

JERRY McCOY:  You just had a headache and you just went home.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: So you guys attended the church, and you were talking about some functions that it had outside of just religious services.  You were talking about it held parties and things.  Do you guys remember anything about what the church looked like, can you describe what the inside of it looked like?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  (pointing to document on table)  There’s the church.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  It had an old wooden stove, and that one (inaudible) wooden stove to keep it warm.

 

JERRY McCOY:  You walked in the door, this was a office over here, and this was a office on this side. And then as you go through, the wall divided the—you walk through here going through here, that’s where the church and the pulpit was at the very end.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  (pointing to picture attached to blue paper)  And there’s the pastor right there standing in front of the church.  Reverend Body at one of the…

 

JOANN McCOY:  Wasn’t that Reverend Turner?

 

JERRY McCOY:  Reverend Turner.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2:  You guys don’t mind if we take pictures, right?

 

McCOY SIBLINGS:  Oh, no, go ahead.

 

JOANN McCOY:  (pointing to picture on same blue paper)  This is our grandmother right here, and that’s Mr. Leroy, now, we were talking about in the corner, Mr. Dotsy.  That’s our uncle right there.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Who, Uncle Buddy?

 

JOANN McCOY:  Lonell.

 

JERRY McCOY:  That’s what I thought.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  That’s Medea.

 

JOANN McCOY:  And that’s Miss Pollard.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And this is Mr. Commodore here.

 

JOANN McCOY:  That’s Mr. Commodore.  They stayed next door to the church.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Yes, yes.

 

JERRY McCOY:  And this is their house right here.

 

JOANN McCOY:  Right.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And these are the moving vans when they come to move thems.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: So that’s what these pictures were, was of moving?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  The day that they moved.

 

SULLIVAN: Which newspaper did you say this was?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Dallas Post Tribune.  It was located in Oak Cliff on Beckley.

 

(Side talking about newspaper clippings)

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  It was May 1962.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: So there are some local cemeteries that have members from or people that are connected in some way to Egypt.  Were most of the members of Little Egypt, the church, buried in any particular cemetery or was it just…

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Most of our family went to Lincoln Cemetery right there in Pleasant Grove.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  And a lot of them—

 

GLORIA McCOY:  A lot of the family members mostly went to—buried in Lincoln.  Because at that time that was the only one we could use.

 

SULLIVAN: We have, like I mentioned earlier, McCree Cemetery, which is close to there. It’s up on Audelia not too far away. Apparently, there was a section in that that’s African American that has Jeff Hill buried in that.

 

JERRY McCOY:  That could have been.

 

SULLIVAN: We know that there’s some kind of connection between that area and at least someone in Little Egypt.

 

JERRY McCOY:  The only other cemetery that I knew about was over at the Fields. You know up there where we had hogs at?

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Uh-huh.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Yes.

 

JERRY McCOY:  There was a cemetery right there by Mr. Field and Mr. Herndon (phonetic) back in there.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  I’m thinking that that’s the one he’s talking about.

 

JERRY McCOY:  That was located on Church Road.

 

SULLIVAN: On Church Road.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Now, I don’t know—

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Where’s the one you was telling us?

 

SULLIVAN: It’s up—well, it’s not too far from where Little Egypt is. It’s on Audelia and—well, actually there’s a little place that’s called McCree Road now. I don’t know…

 

JERRY McCOY:  McCree Road, I can’t remember McCree.  But that was where the cemetery was that I’m talking about.

 

SULLIVAN: There’s another one called Cox, there’s another one that’s over in Carrollton that I haven’t looked at yet.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Yeah, I remember Carrollton.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Carrollton, uh-huh.  Because that one in Carrollton is more like Aunt (inaudible [Thelma?])’s people.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Right.  Because that was Charles’s(inaudible).

 

GLORIA McCOY:  What was her maiden name?

 

SULLIVAN: What was that?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  It was our uncle’s wife by marriage, but I can’t remember what her maiden name.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  My dad’s brother’s wife.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Because her people lived in Carrollton.

 

SULLIVAN: Yeah. Because I had someone who pointed it—just mentioned it to me. I haven’t been over to look at it, but they mentioned it.  It think it’s abandoned right now she said.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And, see, that name you just mentioned, that’s Jeff and Hannah Hill (pointing to photo in blue-covered booklet).

 

SULLIVAN: Oh, that’s a picture of them.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  That’s a picture of them.

 

SULLIVAN: Do you think it would be possible—I don’t necessarily want to take it and get a scan of it if you don’t feel comfortable with that, getting it out of your hands. If you wanted to come to the college one day and let us maybe scan this (pointing to small blue-covered booklet) to get that information.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  I can do it for you and send it to you.  I can.

 

SULLIVAN: Well, if you want to do that.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  I got access.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  It would be all right if they want to take it.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Okay, then.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  If y’all want to take it…

 

SULLIVAN: If you’re comfortable with that. I don’t want to take something…

 

GLORIA McCOY:  There’s several pieces.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: And if there is anything that you would let us scan, we would definitely make sure that…

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Because I would just like to meet y’all in the area, you know, out there where we lived, one day so we could walk around.

 

SULLIVAN: Sure. We could walk around with you. That’d be great.  In fact, one of the projects we’re going to have you do as a class—well, we were thinking about it all at one time—is all go out and take pictures of different locations in that area, walking around so you’ll see where things are.

 

(Simultaneous talking)

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Y’all can keep it because, you know, we all got a copy of that.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: Are you sure?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Yeah.  That’s for the church’s 100^th—what was it, 130 years.

 

JERRY McCOY:  That was 130 years.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: What is it now?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  It’s 135.  This is 132, but that one got more history in it than this one does.

 

(Simultaneous talking)

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: We can absolutely scan this and look at the pictures and get the information and bring it back to you.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Uh-uh.  You can have that because I’ve got one at home.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: Thank you very much.  This will be very useful.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And that got more history in it that these do.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: That would be amazing.  Last question about kind of the church.  Do you guys have any recollection of a church that it was on or near McCree Cemetery off Audelia Road and north of Kingsley?  It was there but, it burned down.  Is that something that you guys…

 

McCOY SIBLINGS:  No.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: All right.  We’re just seeing if that was connected because it was close.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  (inaudible) Up that way?

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah, they were living up that way, but there wasn’t no church up there.

 

JOANN McCOY:  They always came to—

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Where did you say Miss Green and them went to church at?

 

JERRY McCOY:  That was a church in Garland.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  In Garland.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: And you guys still visit the church?

 

JERRY McCOY:  Visit the church?  No, that’s my home church.  My two brothers, we still go to Egypt church.  Matter of fact, I am the Sunday School Superintendent at Egypt church.

 

SULLIVAN: Are you?

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah.  He (pointing to Sandy) teaches the new membership orientation over at the church.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: And that moves, correct? It’s in a different location now?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Yeah.  It’s in Oak Cliff.

 

SULLIVAN: Where in Oak Cliff is that?

 

JERRY McCOY:  On Hutchison Road [sic] (transcriber’s note:  Hutchins Road)—

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And Gallatin on the corner.

 

JERRY McCOY:  It’s got a physical address, should have one on that—should be on here.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: Does it?  Okay. 

 

GLORIA McCOY:  We don’t have a picture of the present—what it looks like now.  It was 1122 Hutchins Road.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Looking for a picture of the church now?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Yeah.

 

(Sandy McCoy Jr, leaves room)

 

GLORIA McCOY:  See, when we moved there, it was frame and it burned.  They built back and then they bricked.  But they have built another beautiful facility; it’s gorgeous now.

 

JERRY McCOY:  We (inaudible) may the Lord Praise us.  Thank you.

 

JOANN McCOY:  Since it burnt, then we had church in a tent.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  There for a little while.  It was in a tent while it was being built.

 

JERRY McCOY:  When they tore it down from over there, then we had church in a tent over here until they built a church.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: And are there any—and you said there was only one living couple from Little Egypt.  When you go to the church, do you meet—do they go to the same church or do you meet—

 

JERRY McCOY:  No, they go to a different church.

 

JOANN McCOY:  They go to a different church now.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: Do you guys meet some of your neighbors’ descendants?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Oh, we see them all the time.  We have reunions.  Most of us, we’re almost kin because…

 

JERRY McCOY:  They’re just like our mothers and fathers to us.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And then some of our families married into each other, so we get to see.  Like the Bells, some of their family married into my family.  As a matter of fact, my brother married one, so we almost double kin.  Then my cousin met some of the families from there and they married into the families, so we get to see most of the offspring a lot, those that are still living.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: And they still have memories of Little Egypt?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Oh, yes.  We try to have a reunion just of Little Egypt, and most of the time—when the Pollards have their reunion, it kind of combine it with the reunion.

 

JOANN McCOY:  They just had a reunion, what here?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  In August.  So we invited a lot of the Little Egypt to come back to their reunion and everything.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: And this happens annually?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Every so often, you know, we just get together.  And a lot of times for the church’s birthday, we always know it’s the second Sunday in April.

 

SULLIVAN: The second Sunday in April? Is that your current service’s birthday or is that…

 

GLORIA McCOY:  The church’s birthday is the second—and they always have the homecoming, it’s normally the second Sunday in April, unless it falls on Easter, then we move it up.  So then that’s when we try to get a lot of the former members to come back to the church.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Used to get a lot of them, but you might not believe it but a lot of them have just died out or just gone now.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And then the offspring of everybody don’t live here.  Some in California, you know, different places.

 

JERRY McCOY:  And then a lot of the offspring go to Egypt Chapel.  You know, the Pollards, their son’s son and great-grandson go to Egypt.

 

SULLIVAN: Would those living descendants, do you think they’d have stories and/or pictures or anything of what their parents—

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Oh, yes.  I know they got some stories.  And I’m pretty sure Mr. Leroy and Miss Lois, they will probably interview.  They’re a nice couple, nice couple.

 

SULLIVAN: We would love to be able to get more folks who are interested to participate and share pictures and stories. Does anybody have any pictures of there on the ground, or do you know?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  We have—in our family pictures, we just have to find them, my grandparents.  Do you remember that picture we took with Mama, and we had all of us and it was the dog Duke?

 

JOANN McCOY:  Uh-huh.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And some of the pictures with the snow on the ground?

 

JOANN McCOY:  Oh, I probably have some of that, pictures of snow with Charles, Charles in the snow when we was right there in Egypt.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And I know I got a picture—you know, we got a picture of the Tom Thumb wedding inside the church out there.

 

JOANN McCOY:  I probably have a lot of them.  I’m sure I do, yeah.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Well, I need to see them.

 

SULLIVAN: If you find those, give me a call and, you know, we can—we’d love to see them.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: Did you hire a photographer or did you have…

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Oh, no.

 

JOANN McCOY:  We just took pictures of our own.  At that time, on those pictures, they had the date and the year on the pictures.  I got a lot of them.  You know, whatever little camera I had, I can’t even remember, but I was—always loved to take pictures.

 

SULLIVAN: I used to have a little Brownie.

 

JOANN McCOY:  The date would come out on it.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  This is a picture of our dad.  That was the head honcho.  And a picture of our mom.  And then this was our neighbor, Miss Frankie May, the one lived next door.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2:  Do you mind if we take pictures?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Uh-uh, uh-uh.  Then the Brooks that lived up the hill, you know, part of their family.  Most all of them are deceased.  The Bells.

 

(Sandy McCoy, Jr. returns to the room.)

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  This is what the church look like now.  This is our youth church, and we built that church right behind it.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And you remember I had a picture of the ground-breaking ceremony?

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Right.  And it’s built directly behind here (indicating on photos).

 

JERRY McCOY:  This church here would be behind this one (indicating on photos).

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  This is the old church we moved into when we moved to Oak Cliff.  That’s still there.

 

SULLIVAN: Well, the people who moved out of Egypt, where did most of them go? Did they—

 

GLORIA McCOY:  I got them divided up on there.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: Yeah, yeah.  On the piece of paper, she—

 

SULLIVAN: She shows all the addresses where they all went.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: Like to North Park, Oak Cliff, and East Dallas.

 

SULLIVAN: Wonderful, thank you.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: This is fabulous.  Thank you so much.

 

JOANN McCOY:  We came here, then the Bells came here, Miss Frankie May came here.

 

JERRY McCOY:  That’s a good view of our church today.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  This building right here (indicating on photo), that’s the old one.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah.  You can only see the top of it.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Here’s a book just like it.  Do you want to let them take it?  We got two.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Yeah.  You can take one of them.

 

SULLIVAN: That’s wonderful. Thank you.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Y’all see, we keep stuff (laughing).

 

JOANN McCOY:  This is Reverend Body (indicating), our pastor.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And his wife, I have her on the inside when it was in the paper (indicating newspaper clipping inside white folded leaflet [funeral program?]).

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  He was our pastor when we moved from out there.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And I think on the inside of one of those, they got a good picture of him and her together in one of them.  Look in the 130, the other one.  This one has more history in it.

 

JOANN McCOY:  I think you said you had two of them, right?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  No.  We got two of these here.  This one had more history in it. 

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: While we’re getting some pictures of that stuff, I want to kind of move on and talk to you guys about—because Egypt was developed before Lake Highlands grew up around it, did it develop its own kind of, like, community leaders or people that—kind of governance of its own?

 

JERRY McCOY:  You mean Egypt the community?

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: Yeah.

 

JERRY McCOY:  I guess it kind of governed its own because everybody did basically what they did.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And then we always—we relied on our pastor for insight, you know, as our leader.

 

SULLIVAN: He was like—

 

GLORIA McCOY:  See, he didn’t live in there, he lived, like, in the Roosevelt Addition, like, by Pleasant Grove.  Our pastor didn’t live in Little Egypt. So he was more, you know, our leader and whatever in each family.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: So it was definitely centered around the church.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Yeah, it was, definitely.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  And you were talking about like, a figure or something in the neighborhood were my dad, the Dotsys, the Bells.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  The mens.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  They were the mens that were the most, I guess you would say, leader.  And our grandfather Moses Robinson, because he was a minister.  But those—

 

JOANN McCOY:  And Medea because, you know, at one time they had service there in Medea’s house.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  They had services at my grandmother’s house.

 

JOANN McCOY:  Annie T. Robinson.  She would be one.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: So do you guys have any favorite stories about relatives or, like. colorful figures in the community that you guys…

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Oh, we better not tell (laughing).  No. Not really.

 

JERRY McCOY:  No, not really we could think of.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Because we all just played together.  But believe it or not, we could go out there and just get a rope and pull, tug rope.  And it’d be all the kids, it wasn’t just—because the guys thought they was too macho to play with us or if we played jacks, whatever we did, we did it together.

 

(Jerry and Sandy McCoy leave the room)

 

SULLIVAN: But the parents and your grandparents, was there any, I guess, they weren’t—I guess no colorful stories about them, huh?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  No.  Because my great-grandfather suffered a stroke, and he was paralyzed, and then it affected his mind.  So then after that, it was more like my great-grandmother taking care of him, something like that, you know.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: So I know we kind of talked a little bit about the roads, were any of them, like, formally named?  Did they have specific—

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Uh-uh (shaking head).

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: Or did you guys have names form them?  A nickname or…

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Uh-uh.  No, we just going down the road to see—

 

JOANN McCOY:  We just going  up there to Mr. Leroy and them house, up to Grandma’s house.  They didn’t have…

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And we could almost stand on the back—our back porch and look directly at my grandparents’ house because we lived down the hill.

 

JOANN McCOY:  They did not have names, we didn’t name them anything.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1:  Since they weren’t connected to the City services, water or waste, how did you guys get water?

 

(Jerry McCoy returns)

 

JERRY McCOY:  Had to haul it in.

 

JOANN McCOY:  My daddy had us a water tank.  He had a water tank later on built up on the side of the house.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Beginning he had to haul it in.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: So was that, like, rainwater?

 

JERRY McCOY:  No.  You had to haul it in; in other words, you went to where you could haul—they had people that used to do that, bring your water out and fill your tank up.

 

JOANN McCOY:  Fill your tank up.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: Okay, okay.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And then my daddy had it hooked up where we could turn on the (inaudible) and it’d come in the house, but they had to put water in the tank.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: Okay. That was a big question we had.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And we had butane gas, the big tank outside for our gas.

 

JOANN McCOY:  That we played hobby horse on.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  They would come and they’d fill that.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: Since you guys didn’t have sewer services, how did you guys deal with—did you guys have outhouses?

 

McCOY SIBLINGS:  Outhouses.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Later on, they came and built us some boxes that they would come out and empty that.  Once they started building the community up around Egypt in order where it wouldn’t be smelly, they would come out, some mens would come out and empty those.  They was built by their specification where they could come out and empty them.  And that’s the way—that was your—that’s one reason that I was glad to get from out there because of that.  We didn’t have no inside facilities.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: And was that the same with the garbage, the trash?  Did they come and pick that up or did you have to take it?

 

JERRY McCOY:  No, we got rid of our own trash.  A lot of time we burned up most of it.  You’d just go out there and put it in a barrel and burn it up.  Or you’d find a ditch and throw it in the ditch, that’s what you did with it.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Because you hear on the news now when they tell some of the areas no burn, it was the same thing with us.  When it was hot (inaudible) tell you, you know, you’re not supposed to burn trash outside, thinking of fire damage and everything.

 

SULLIVAN: Do you remember when it was that they built that—those boxes that they…

 

JERRY McCOY:  It had to be right around about 1959, 1960, somewhere in there.  Just a couple two or three years before we was ready to move.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1:  I know you told us who—what your father did, you said he was a construction worker?

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1:  And your mother—

 

JERRY McCOY:  Did domestic work, yeah.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1:  Was it the same with a lot of the other people?

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yes, it was. Someone in the Bells were concrete people, they’d pour all kind of concrete, any kind of concrete you would want to pour, they could pour it.  As a matter of fact, they poured our driveway.

 

JOANN McCOY:  Poured our concrete out there in our driveway.

 

JERRY McCOY:  And then you had one fellow, he worked at a lumberyard, Mr. Leroy worked at a lumberyard for years.  Matter of fact, he retired from the lumberyard which were located on Buckner and Garland Road.  He worked there for years.  Now, let’s see.  Mr. Northington worked at a cleaners.

 

JOANN McCOY:  I had no idea what Mr. Northington did.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Uncle Buddy, he, like, did construction clean up around houses and so forth.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  What about Mr. Pollard?

 

JERRY McCOY:  Mr. Pollard did yard work.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Mr. Jeeter (phonetic)?

 

JERRY McCOY:  I don’t know what Jeeter did.  Oh, he worked—he worked at cleaning up a theater.  And also Mr. Peoples he did—he cleaned (inaudible).

 

JOANN McCOY:  Right, right, yeah.  I remember that.

 

JERRY McCOY:  I don’t know what Mr. Brooks did.  He worked for the railroad.  Mr. Brooks worked for the railroad.  Tawleenya pimped.  Y’all excuse me.  No, he didn’t do nothing, Mr. Tawleenya.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Now, Mr. Tawleenya was a character.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Ooo wee, he was mean.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Didn’t he paint his shoes red?

 

JERRY McCOY:  He painted his shoes red.  And he probably was one of the really—the sharpest dressed mens out there on the hill.

 

JOANN McCOY:  Best dressed person, yes he was.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Let me—let me—now, that brought up another story.  Now, my uncle, Uncle Buddy, that’s McLemore, that man now, could nearly come up with anything that you wanted to do.  He was just that smart, that knowledgeable.  He had always talked about he was going to get a truck and build it where he could live in it.  And then they come along with what they call the “good time van.”  And then he had already started constructing that for his own purpose.  And then my grandmother—my uncle used to love to be on the phone all the time.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Yeah.

 

JERRY McCOY:  And she told him one time that one day, they going to have a phone where you can walk around with it stuck upside your head every day.  And you see how people say things and then it come to pass, you know.  And I said, well, Medea need to be here to see this phone, she had already done visioned it was going to be coming.  Because he loved to talk on the phone and say he needed one where he just walk around and talk on it all day.  Now, don’t we have that?  Yeah.  The good times vans, we have the good times vans where you get back there and sleep.  But I think Uncle Buddy more or less lived out of a Winnebago because he say he going to be where he could cook and do everything, and he just going to travel.  That’s what he said he going to do.

 

SULLIVAN: Folks in my generation (inaudible).

 

JERRY McCOY:  Right, right.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: Now, we’re going towards Egypt’s final moments here.  What were the events surrounding the decision to actually sell out and move?

 

JERRY McCOY:  It wasn’t a hard decision to make.  Everybody ready to get off that hill anyway because, liked I say, they didn’t have any facilities out there.  And if they was offering them enough money that they could go someplace else and relocate and have all the facilities and things that they needed, everything that they wanted, it ain’t no telling how many times when they moved into this house they went in there and flushed the commode.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  See, we moved a year before Little Egypt moved.  And the real estate lady was named Miss Bailey, wasn’t it?

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  I don’t know what real estate company she was with.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah, her name was Bailey.  Might even be a picture of her…

 

JOANN McCOY:  Isn’t that with Mr. Dude?

 

JERRY McCOY:  With Mr. Dude.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  (Pointing to picture in laminated newspaper clipping)  Here she is, right there.

 

JOANN McCOY:  Seems like she’s handing him something.

 

JERRY McCOY:  There she is right there.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  But I don’t know what real estate company it was.

 

SULLIVAN: I remember seeing it. I’ve got it somewhere in a newspaper article about the events leading up to that, from their point of view at least.

 

JERRY McCOY:  So it really—it really wasn’t a hard decision to make.  And when they came out and introduced that they were buying, everybody say, “Yeah, let’s go.  Let’s blow this camp.”  I don’t  know if they said it like that, but—

 

GLORIA McCOY:  (Referring to laminated newspaper clipping) Cash Real Estate, McFarland (phonetic) and Cash Real Estate Firm, that’s who she worked for.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2:  Now, as you were going to move, I mean, this was—what were your feelings?  I mean, you were leaving behind Little Egypt?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  See, we had already moved.  We moved in ’61, and they did that in ’62.  So we was—we moved here August of ’61, and they moved May of ’62, so we had already moved.

 

SULLIVAN: In this house?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  In this house right here.

 

JERRY McCOY:  It wasn’t a hard decision to make.  You know, you got all these beautiful nice homes around you, and cut streets going right up to you, but ain’t nothing coming—coming—actually that you can use, they’re coming to you but you can’t use it, they stop.  And then you had to get on a dirt road, the mud, had to park your car down on the street on that concrete when it start raining to where you could get it out the next morning to be able to go to work.  They didn’t have any city—no city facilities, no running water, no sewage.  So who wouldn’t be glad to get away from that?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  So Jerry, did—Mama said that Daddy made the decision where one day he was standing out in that park they could see, he said, they’d rather let them—

 

JOANN McCOY:  Water that yard.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  —water the park than to let—

 

JOANN McCOY:  Flag Pole Hill.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  —the water come up in here—Flag Pole Hill, and Daddy made the decision then to move.  And that’s when they started looking.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: So your family was gone before they decided to—

 

GLORIA McCOY:  To actually sell out, yes.  We had already moved.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Right.  Moved over here, what, about two years, a year?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  A year.

 

SULLIVAN: Did anybody in the community ever ask anybody else, the white community, say, hey, we could use some support here?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  I’m sure they did, but they wanted that land in there.  So of course they—

 

JERRY McCOY:  And they’re not going to do it if they—it’s the hardship going to make you leave, and then you take whatever they offer you to get on out of there.  And that’s exactly what they did.  I think all of them got probably the same amount of money as far as the property that they owned.  What was it?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  6500.

 

JERRY McCOY:  $6500, dirt now.  Yeah, but at that time, that was enough money for people to move and relocate.  People moved and bought other houses out here in this community here.  So it was a easy decision to make because people got tired of living there.  And you know, as I say, progress is our most important product, so they wanted to start progress and wanted to do better than what we were doing.  So it was easy to get away from Egypt.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2:  So why did you choose this area specifically?

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Relatives.

 

JERRY McCOY:  We had relative lived out here.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  I think because Daddy’s brother and sister lived out in this area

 

JERRY McCOY:  And then it was a pretty nice area, too, at that time, you know.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  When we moved in, we still had white neighbors.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  All the white neighbors was in here when we moved here.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And the black neighborhood was on the other side of University.

 

JOANN McCOY:  And Mama kind of wanted Hamilton Park at one time.  Daddy got over here.

 

SULLIVAN: May I ask how the white community felt? Were your neighbors friendly and accepting?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Uh-huh (nodding).  They were good.

 

JOANN McCOY:  The little boy next door would come over and play on her piano.  He could play the piano.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  His name was Randy and my name is Sandy, and we used to have a paper route together.  And I even kept the book.

 

JERRY McCOY:  But you know, even at that (inaudible) at a period of time they’re going to move out.  like, now, they’ll still move to work.  They’re moving out.  They’re going north to Frisco and every place now.  Now, when they get to Frisco, what’s going to happen, where they going?  First it was Richardson, and then from Richardson, Plano, and then from Plano, McKinney, and from McKinney to Frisco.  Then they turn all this over to the Dallas area.  Look at your schools and things here in Dallas, look what’s going to up here in Dallas compared to, say, start at Richardson, Plano, and those schools there.  Those kids there stand a chance of getting a better education than these kids here in the Dallas Independent School District.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Now, I think Dallas Independent School District was good because I come out of it.

 

(Laughing)

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And I went to Booker T. Washington. It’s performing and arts magnate now, but that’s where all of us graduated from except him and Lee. 

 

JERRY McCOY:  I graduated from Hamilton Park.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And Lee graduated from North Dallas. 

 

JERRY McCOY:  Hamilton Park Bobcat, yeah.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  But that’s why we kind of moved in this area because Daddy’s—he had a sister and a brother that lived out here in the area.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: So you said you stay in touch with a lot of your former neighbors from Little Egypt.  Do you think—you mentioned that some of them may be interested in interviewing with us?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Some of them might.

 

(Simultaneous talking)

 

GLORIA McCOY:  (inaudible) and Dotsy.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  They’ve been here—

 

JERRY McCOY:  Mr. Leroy Dotsy.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  They are the oldest that’s still living that come out of that neighborhood.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Probably have more memories than we do.

 

JERRY McCOY:  They’re 91, 92 years old.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Very good, very active.

 

SULLIVAN: Before they’re gone.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  And they live out by Paul Quinn College, where they moved to.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: And after you moved, how did the new lifestyle compare to the one—

 

(Simultaneous talking)

 

JOANN McCOY:  Oh, we’re like night and day.  We loved it once you got—

 

JERRY McCOY:  I just loved to go and flush the commode.  Now, compare that to walking outside to the outhouse.

 

JOANN McCOY:  When it’s cold.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah, when it’s cold.  You can go in there and turn on the hot and cold water.  You can go in there and take you a shower instead of running your water in a bathtub. 

 

(Simultaneous talking)

 

GLORIA McCOY:  There wasn’t any bathtub.  It wasn’t a bathtub, it was—that’s a bathtub in there (pointing to hallway).  What kind of tub we had?  Tin tub.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  We were the first one’s got running water in the house.  What my dad did, he got—built cross ties and put a big tank on it, then ran a line down from it into the house, and so we become the first one to have running water inside the house.  Instead of going out to the well, we used to have a well.

 

JERRY McCOY:  That’s where I was telling you, we was hauling water in.  Now, up here, Miss Narcissus—

 

GLORIA McCOY:  The Brooks.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah.  They had a well, and a lot of times the community right in that area would get together and let them come out and bring water and put it in that well, and you’d have water to wash with and do whatever you needed to do.  Ain’t that so primitive?

 

(Laughing)

 

JERRY McCOY:  And you don’t know what it take for you to get out?  Easy.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  So now you see how we felt when we moved here?

 

JERRY McCOY:  I was ready to go.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Because whenever you had a dead bird up in that well—

 

JERRY McCOY:  Uh-oh.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  —you had to dip all of that water out, start all over again.

 

JERRY McCOY:  That’s what we’re talking about.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  So you want to know how we felt (laughing)?

 

JERRY McCOY:  And then a lot of people kept warm by wood stoves and things.  They cut wood and—well, we had one.

 

JOANN McCOY:  We had a wood stove, yeah.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  We had a wood stove, got the foot tub, you had to haul the water in and heat the water off the stove, and then pour it in to take a bath.

 

MALE INTERVIEWER:  (Transcriber’s note:  this speaker is running the camera):  And y’all said y’all had a big propane tank, right, so is that how y’all ran your stoves and everything is propane?

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah, even your heaters and thing that ran off of butane.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Butane.

 

MALE INTERVIEWER:  How about lighting?

 

JERRY McCOY:  We did have electric.  That’s about the only thing we had.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: Did everyone have electricity?

 

McCOY SIBLINGS:  Yeah, uh-huh. 

 

JERRY McCOY:  Everybody that wanted it had it.  What about Miss Pollard and them, did they have it?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  I don’t know about them.  I don’t know (laughing).  I don’t think they did, but…

 

JOANN McCOY:  (Laughing)

 

JERRY McCOY:  Because they would have—they would have the kerosene lamps.  A lot of people could afford it; a lot of people couldn’t.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2:  Did the change in location change your employment situations?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  We was all in school.

 

JOANN McCOY:  We were in school.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  But Daddy and Mama kept theirs, theirs was the same.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Yeah.  He worked for George F. Mixon.

 

JERRY McCOY: Real estate company.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  Real estate company.  that’s where he retired from.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: The final question we want to ask you:  Is there anything that you guys would like to add that we haven’t looked at or anything we haven’t covered?

 

JERRY McCOY:  I think y’all done covered all the bases.

 

GLORIA McCOY:   Y’all covered everything.  We could sit here all day now.  It’s fond memories, yeah.

 

JOANN McCOY:  Yes, it is.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  We’re glad where we are, but it made us appreciate what we got because of where we came from.  It was a close knitted community.

 

JERRY McCOY:  (pointing to laminated newspaper clipping)  You think I wasn’t thrilled to death to get out of something like that and move into something like this?

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: Absolutely.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Now, that help you make up your mind, you know, when you see, you come over here and look at this nice house, and then you go back and you got to walk in that?  Now, obviously it looked better than that.

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  After looking at that, and I was talking to my cousin, looking at my cousin’s—talking to my cousin yesterday, and I was telling—showing this to him and I, “Man, can you believe we actually lived…” (laughing).

 

JOANN McCOY:  Listen, our house and Miss Frankie May and them houses were pretty good houses.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Our house and Miss Frankie May house and Miss Dotsy—

 

JOANN McCOY:  That’s right.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  But even when Daddy and them moved here—

 

JERRY McCOY:  And Mr. Peoples.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  —they did a lot, because when they lived—when we moved here, out the kitchen it was just three steps, so Daddy built another porch on there.  And then we—a one-car garage, Daddy made it—well, it’s almost a three-car garage out there.  And then they added—they built that patio on to the back, added another bathroom, so Daddy and them still in moving here, he did a lot of remodeling with the Bells, (inaudible) —

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  He was a concrete man.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  He was a concrete man, and he’s the one that poured it.  So it didn’t cost us a lot.  I’m sure he charged…

 

SANDY McCOY, JR.:  All his sons, they was all concrete, construction.  (Pointing to photo in laminated newspaper clipping)  That was Old Man Pollard’s house.  He’d come in there, and he’d be full up, and he come in and fall on the bed and he’d drop his change through the floor.  We’d go up under the house and we get all that change.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  They say when the bulldozer came through there, said it just barely touched their house and it just fell down (laughing).

 

JERRY McCOY:  Who house is this (pointing to photo in laminated newspaper clipping)?

 

JOANN McCOY:  Let me see.

 

JERRY McCOY:  The Bells?

 

(McCoy siblings looking at photo)

 

JERRY McCOY:  Because I see the sign.

 

JOANN McCOY:   You should see the name of the shopping center there.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah, that the name of the shopping center.  We can’t see the name.

 

JOANN McCOY:  Can’t see the name of it, but that’s it. 

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Northlake.

 

JOANN McCOY:  Let me see if you can see it better on this one.

 

(McCoy siblings looking at blue poster board)

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Well, it wouldn’t be the Pollards’ house because the shopping center—

 

JERRY McCOY:  No, it’s the Bells.

 

JOANN McCOY:  Let me see what you looking at.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Right here.

 

SULLIVAN: You’ve got somethings written on the back of this.

 

JOANN McCOY:  I have no idea.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Oh, some old telephone numbers there.  The Pollards and…

 

SULLIVAN: Those are the names of the…Lucille Fox.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  She moved to California.

 

JERRY McCOY:  That’s one of the daughters of the Pollards.

 

SULLIVAN: You have Los Angeles 9008.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Those are old.  They’re not no good.

 

SULLIVAN: I’m trying to remember what—because I grew up in Los Angeles.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Because a lot of them, that’s where they moved to, California.

 

JOANN McCOY:  A lot of the Pollards did.

 

JERRY McCOY:  That’s a pretty nice looking house.  It wasn’t a bad looking house.  All of them wasn’t shacks.

 

JOANN McCOY:  All of them wasn’t like that.

 

SULLIVAN: Built their own houses.

 

JERRY McCOY:  Yeah,, everybody built their own houses—

 

SULLIVAN: Construction and…

 

JERRY McCOY:  Right, right, they did a lot of that.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Johnson Construction Company that bulldozed everything.

 

JOANN McCOY:  I don’t know whose house is that.

 

SULLIVAN: Would it be possible to scan these (indicating laminated newspaper clipping)?

 

GLORIA McCOY:  That’s when I went to the Post Tribune, I went there yesterday to see if I could get another—if I could get some more up-to-date, but the person I needed to talk to wasn’t going to be in until today and they close at 12:00, so I said Thursday I was going to go back up there since I have the exact date that they moved, maybe I could get it.  That’s why I was looking for another copy.

 

SULLIVAN: Well, I was going to say, we can do that.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  I just want one, really, for my own self, you know, so we could read it better, you know, to see if they have them.  You know, the lady didn’t talk very hopeful, but that was her.

 

SULLIVAN: Maybe—we have some newspaper clippings that we got from the library, but I don’t recall seeing that one.

 

MALE INTERVIEWER:  Batteries.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: They dead?

 

MALE INTERVIEWER:   Let’s change the batteries.

 

SULLIVAN: The batteries are out?

 

MALE INTERVIEWER:   Yeah.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: I think that’s about all we had anyways.  So thank you guys again so much for doing this.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: We got so much information.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: There’s just two things I wanted to get.  If we could have you sign this just as consent for us to use this and let other people listen to it as well?

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: You and your other brother because he came on camera as well.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: We just want to make sure that…

 

JERRY McCOY:  You need to come and sign your John Henry here before they can put you on the screen.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: I think we got pictures of all the documents that you guys have.

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 2: Thank you, again, for letting us have…

 

GLORIA McCOY:  Could we have maybe his number in case we come up with something and come up with some more information?  Somebody’s number? 

 

FEMALE INTERVIEWER 1: Yeah.

 

GLORIA McCOY:  So in case we come up with something else, we can give y’all a call?

(Mr. Sullivan giving business cards to McCoy siblings.)

SULLIVAN: So if you come across any other information or if you just have a question or something you thought of, and you go, “wait a minute, I just remembered something.”

(End of Recording)