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Transcription: [00:19:58]
{SPEAKER name="Shelia Montague Parker"}
Is there anything special you did?
{SPEAKER name="Ruth Smith"}
No, mmm-mmm. The same-old routine as it was another Sunday.
[00:20:07]
{SPEAKER name="Shelia Montague Parker"}
Ok. Uh, tell me, um, what other information can you give me in reference to the oyster house? Um, your work there?
[00:20:21]
{SPEAKER name="Ruth Smith"}
[[sighs]]
[00:20:25]
{SPEAKER name="Shelia Montague Parker"}
How did, how did you get your oysters? Is there a conveyor belt? And how did you put the oysters on your box, or how did you do that? And weighing them, um?
[00:20:37]
{SPEAKER name="Ruth Smith"}
Ok, when I first started, they had mens to bring 'em out in, uh, wire baskets on a wheelbarrow and they would throw them up on the table—
{SPEAKER name="Shelia Montague Parker"}
Mhmm.
[00:20:51]
{SPEAKER name="Ruth Smith"}
And as time went on, they put in, uh, conveyor baskets that rolls around the house over the tables. And when you needed oysters, you just reach up and tilt one of the baskets and dump 'em down on the table. So when I left, that's what, that's the way it was.
{SPEAKER name="Shelia Montague Parker"}
Ok.
[00:21:11]
{SPEAKER name="Ruth Smith"}
And you have the conveyor belts, you have, um, a hole cut in the table and your, and your shells, you [[ ? ]] 'em in this hole and there's a conveyor belt under the table that takes 'em outside.
[00:21:25]
{SPEAKER name="Shelia Montague Parker"}
Ok. Did you have to lift your buckets, uh, to a skimmer, or—
{SPEAKER name="Ruth Smith"}
Mhmm.
[00:21:30]
{SPEAKER name="Shelia Montague Parker"}
Even the women had to lift the buckets also?
{SPEAKER name="Ruth Smith"}
Yes.
{SPEAKER name="Shelia Montague Parker"}
Oh—
[00:21:34]
{SPEAKER name="Ruth Smith"}
After you get your bucket full. Then you take them up to the, like you said, the skimmer window and dump them on this big thing that drains the water from 'em. Then they rakes them off there into another gallon container, and then they had a window, they had a, something like a chalkboard, where they would put your, your balance up.
{SPEAKER name="Shelia Montague Parker"}
Ok.
[00:22:04]
{SPEAKER name="Ruth Smith"}
They had it so you could see it from the side of the window you were.
[00:22:08]
{SPEAKER name="Shelia Montague Parker"}
What was the, um, racial makeup when you were there? Was it all black, black and white, or,or Mexicans, or—?
{SPEAKER name="Ruth Smith"}
No, it was all black shuckers.
{SPEAKER name="Shelia Montague Parker"}
Ok.
[00:22:20]
{SPEAKER name="Ruth Smith"}
And in the skimmer part, in the skimmer room, it was all white people.
{SPEAKER name="Shelia Montague Parker"}
Ok.