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Transcription: [00:14:49]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
I'm just rambling on you can see that. [[Laughs]]

{SPEAKER name="Louise Spence"}
[[Laughs]]
No, that's that's alright.
[00:14:51]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Uh huh. Um, I knew the young man's father and mother.
[00:15:00]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
So, when he came here as retired Army officer,
[00:15:06]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
after his uncle passed, I called him and asked him to come out here
[00:15:12]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
so that I could tell him what I had since I don't have any close relatives, you know.
[00:15:22]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
What I had, and asked him to give me an estimation
[00:15:28]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
of how much more in these modern times that I would have to add to it, see?
[00:15:37]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
I really knew I had to paid up insurance with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company,
[00:15:41]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
and I had-- and I had received a letter from them idea how much it would be worth,
[00:15:51]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
and I also knew that my mother had had a straight life insurance with Metropolitan. [[background noise]]
[00:15:58]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
You know so, it done business with the family on thirty year endowment insurance, you see.
[00:16:05]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Ah, but anyway I asked this fellow to give me what--
[00:16:11]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
what the modern day prices, what I would need.
[00:16:16]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Now, I let him know that I had a grave already paid for in the Calvary cemetary,
[00:16:25]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
and the contract and everything for the grave.
[00:16:30]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
And I told him the face value of the Metropolitan insurance and asked him
[00:16:37]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
to give me an idea about how much, you know, I would need to add to it.
[00:16:44]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
I don't think I did wrong.
[00:16:48]

{SPEAKER name="Louise Spence"}
That seems like a fair question.
[[Laughter]]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
I think so.

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Most obvious question to ask.

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Right.
[00:16:54]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
But here was the thing that got me most upset with him.
[00:16:59]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
I told him that Nat Landau was the executor of my will.
[00:17:12]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Now what I didn't tell him was that Nat's mother had left my mother more
[00:17:19]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
than enough to pay for her hospitalization and all that kind of stuff, you know.
[00:17:24]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
But I didn't just didn't spend it and waste it up cause you know I knew, I didn't know who was going to leave first,
[00:17:34]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
And I wasn't goin' to waste up her money,
[00:17:36]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
and not have sufficient thing when Miss Landau had left enough
[00:17:44]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
to do-- for her, for her to do,
[00:17:47]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
and nobody else ta do that.
[00:17:50]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
But her mother and father had helped my mother to bring me up the way I was grown, see.
[00:17:57]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Um huh.
[00:17:59]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
It'd been a family situation. And when Mamma got it so she would be awake.
[00:18:06]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Miss Landau would have-- Mrs. Alfred Landau would have somebody to come and pick her up.
[00:18:13]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Every morning. She paid them to take Mamma over there to the house
[00:18:20]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
and set up there with her while somebody waited on both of them.
[[Laughter]]
[00:18:25]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
That happened.

{SPEAKER name="Louise Spence"}
That's nice. Yeah.
[00:18:28]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
[[Speaking happily]] I didn't - Of course, I didn't explain all that to him.
[00:18:32]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
I just asked him, you know, about my business.
[00:18:36]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Shit! He writes Nat a letter, Nat Landau a letter,
[00:18:41]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
and Nat was so outdone, he sent me a copy. He said nothing [[Laughs]].
[00:18:49]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
But he writes Nat a letter telling him how much insurance I had; like he didn't know.
[00:18:55]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
[[Laughs]] And where I had a grave, and he had chipped her out, and 3 hundred dollars had--
[00:19:07]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Like I didn't sense enough to read the contract. Somebody had to pay for the opening and closing of the grave.
[00:19:13]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Hmm.

[00:19:16]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Ah huh. I don't know where to start. But at least they did send me to school, and I tried learning a little bit.
[00:19:24]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
And I'm fortunate enough to have the lawyers on both sides of Nat's family
[00:19:30]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
to explain anything that I need to know to -- Now wouldn't I be stupid to go do something,
[00:19:39]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
not ask them, "Am I doing it right or wrong?"
[00:19:43]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
I've done that.
[00:19:45]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
When my mother and her sisters were living,

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Right.
[00:19:50]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
'Cause, see, they were working,
[00:19:53]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
and I was the one who had to explain to them what was being said or done
[00:19:59]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
and God listened, to be able to have folks to tell me to what to do,
[00:20:05]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
and how to do it. How to do all the things. Shh!!
[00:20:10]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
I told the guy that, he come writin' out a letter explain' what I had,
[00:20:18]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
and uh, and uh, what he would have to be responsible for.
[[Laughter by all]].
AH HA!!
[00:20:23]

{SPEAKER name="Louise Spence"}
He expected to make money off it.
[00:20:25]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
[[In loud voice]] That's what-- That's what got-- I think, and the sad part
[00:20:29]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
about it is that he thought I was dumb enough to go turn my insurance policies over to him!
[00:20:37]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
I didn't owe him nothing! I have receipts for everybody that's been buried in their family.
[00:20:43]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
He told Nat that his family had buried folks, and why was he telling him when Nat went to the funeral.
[00:20:52]

{SPEAKER name="Louise Spence"}
[[Laughs]]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Hum. Hum.
[00:20:53]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Nat knows that Mama, Deason, Sidney Olsen, his uncle,
[00:21:01]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
got this grave over there in Calvary when they opened it up to Colored folk.
[00:21:06]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
too, right across the road where Nat's mother and father
[00:21:12]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
are buried in the Temple of Israel. See, he didn't know that.
[00:21:17]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
And he writes him a letter tellin' him about what he'd be responsible for.
[00:21:22]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Come tellin' me. You know, I can't uh-- You know, pick a color scheme like I'm givin' a party, now.
[[Laughs]]

{SPEAKER name="Louise Spence and Pearl Bowser"}
[[Laughs]]
[00:21:31]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
On my funeral. I said, "Uh-uh!" I sat and asked him that I just wanted to have--
[00:21:39]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Estimate-

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
an idea about how much more I would have to add at a
[00:21:46]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
present day prices to have a decent funeral.
[00:21:50]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
I said, "My church will arrange its own musical program, its own myriad of things."
[00:21:57]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Because I have been a member there and served there long enough for somebody,
[00:22:02]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
some of them, they were children when they first remember me, now they all grown up and takin' over.
[00:22:10]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
And they know about what I like and dislike. They'll all treat me up with decency, the majority of em.
[00:22:18]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
I was sayin', "I wouldn't need you to arrange no program for my people, and blah, blah, blah."
[00:22:27]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
I said, "Whoever's back here, they'll, you know, slick whatever's goin' on."
[00:22:32]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
So he writes Nat and tells him, "I know from our conversation that you were surprised

[00:22:40]
{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
to know that she had a second cousin.

[00:22:45]
{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Now what does a second cousin got to do with what I own? [[Laughter]]

[00:22:49]
{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
And what owned at that time, 'cause she dead now, but

[00:22:55]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
And what she owned at that time was left by her mother and father, sisters - sister and brothers.

[00:23:01]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Would you like to go back to when you were a girl growing up in this community?
[00:23:10]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
We'd like to ask you some questions about that.
[00:23:13]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
I didn't grow up in this community. I grew up there, in the 1st Ward.

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
In the 1st Ward. Yeah.
[00:23:20]

{SPEAKER name="Louise Spence"}
Could you tell us a little about your schooling?
[00:23:22]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Well, I attended elementary school at Grant School.
[00:23:29]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
It was located at that time where Hood Bins is, at Auction and Salem.
[00:23:39]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
And I finished there at age 14.
[00:23:49]

Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-03-28 21:39:59 ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-03-29 16:37:57 ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-03-29 22:05:35 ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-03-30 16:44:27 ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-03-31 10:00:56