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Well, I was born in 1899, and my mother died
when I was two years old, and my father died when I
was five. I was pitched out, a little boy alone.
And I grown up might near by myself. My brother,
he kept me. My daddy, after my mother died, he
married again and the lady he married didn't want
me, and took me to my brother's home and his wife
didn't want me, and so I was just turned loose you
know, might near it, and didn't send me to school,
and didn't get no schooling, you know.
Well, the school house was just this little one
room house, grown up people went to it, there was
more grown up people than were young that went to
it. They would take all the fire out of the room of
it with one stove in the middle of the floor, so
the big boys would get up close to the stove, and
the little fellows would have to take around the
wall, you know. You couldn't learn nothing like
that in the winters. You'd have to cut your own
wood and carry it from the woods in the wintertime.
Just to think of what the people has today and what
people went through that day and time. Today the
kids don't do nothing, just loaf around, that's the
reason you have so much trouble.
I was on battleship Montana, I reckon the oldest
ship in the world. I had a pretty hard job, I was
stationed at a fifteen inch gun, and I handled one
sack of powder that went through the gun. There
were two sacks of powder, and each one of them
weighed seventy-five pounds, was in a silk sack and
had a copper trough right out of the storage room
and the people in there, couple of men in there,
handling the powder in the storage room and we was
in the loading room, then catching it as it came
out and putting it into an elevator and sending it
to the top, to the gun. You catch it in your arms
like that you know, it might near turn you around
whenever it come out of that storage room, and that
cooper trough and the silk sack, oh, it took a man
to handle, to hold that thing.
We was living there (Chilhowie), and my wife
lived close by, and we got acquainted going to
church there, you know, had a little church out
from my house where we lived and we got acquainted
there. So, her daddy wouldn't allow me to come to
his house to see her and we had to slip around to
see one another, had to slip around, so it went on
for about a year, and I asked him. I said, Mr.
Heffinger, I said Clara and I want to get married.
And he said look here boy, he said I love you, and
I wouldn't let no man have my daughter. I said,
well if you don't let us get married, I said, I'm
going to steal her. He said look here boy, he says
anything go through a inch pipe get away from me.
And next Saturday we run off and got married and
somebody done called him, her home there, and
notified him that we was on our way to Bristol to
get married. Come a storm, and blown the wires
down, didn't have no telephone service, we was
bound to get married.
Oh yea, I love to mow grass man, I don't care if
I have to mow it every other day it would suit me
all right. I've got to do something, I'm an old
man, you know.
I appreciate the lord, he 's been so good for
me, and all my life. I just want to live for him,
and read the book. I accepted the lord in 1932, and
I was baptized in Riverdale Baptist Church. I
couldn't read no good, but the lord got a hold of
me you know, and I asked the lord to help me. I
asked the lord to help me and he sure did help me,
I'll tell you that. And I'd read in the bible that
if the holy spirit that dwelleth within you, you
don't need any man to teach you, for that, that
dwelleth within you shall teach you all things,
even things to come. So I took him up on that line,
and I've been a coming ever since. So I love the
lord, buddy, he's the greatest!
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Name: Roby McVey, 98 years old
Presently resides: At his house in
Roanoke County
Born: Russell County, Va., May 18, 1899
Moved to present hometown: Roanoke in
1927
Type of work after the war: Worked for
Norfolk & Western
Family: Raised 2 children with his late
wife, Clara
Branch of service: Navy, on the
battleship Montana
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