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DM Interview Mary & Tom Ferko -3- 8/7/72 Tape #6
DM I'll bet you did buy all your food at a market
TF Yeh but then there were no markets like there is today we just had individual
stores, we didn't have big markets like A & P like they do today, you could buy
all your stuff in one place but it was individually owned just small stores
MF __________ they used to have the meat and grocery store together
TF And they used to come around here with trucks, they came around and everybody bought
Joe Gallio would come in here on a pay day, we lived the house below here, he would come to our place about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, 2 trucks now imagine, full of groceries and everything and then he'd go out of here 3 or 4 o'clock the next morn-
ing
DM Who'd buy food at 3 o'clock in the morning
TF Everybody, they'd just wait for them guys
DM Like the lady of the house would wait up because the man of the house would be sleeping, you were lucky that you lived down here so you could get them in the
afternoon
TF That's all the owner did, the one that owned 2 trucks, he take the checks
back to the bank and get the cash his daddy was some hid of vice president in
the bank and he made sure he got the money see you got paid by check
and he couldn't carry that much money around so when he got so many checks off
of this truck he's go back to Freeland and cash them checks in for cash so he
would have enough for the rest to pay the people
DM Boy oh boy things have changed a lot since then
TF And then the bus used to come in almost every hour back and forth and it cost a nickel to go to Freeland
DM How much would you say you got by with on your food bill, you were making how much a month, $3.33 a day to $4.62
TF That all depended how many days you worked sometimes you didn't work no 2 weeks in them days, pay days you were lucky to get two weeks