单身母亲将六个孩子养育成人

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In this episode of the storycorps podcast, how one mother made ends meet during the holidays. When Carrie Conley's husband left in the early 1960s, she started raising six children on her own. She took a job at a hospital, delivering meals to patients as what was called "a tray girl." Here Conley and her youngest son Jerry Johnson remember that time.

When he left, I just said, Lord, what am I going to do with all these kids, by myself? And I just had a small amount of money for food, 'cause everything had to come out of the small cheque that I was getting.

 How did you get that?

Well, neck bones were ten cents a pound and I would go to store and get 10 pounds. And buy lima beans(菜豆), black-eyed peas, something to boil for every day in the week. So one of my son Nasa, he didn’t eat black-eyed peas because he is so mean.

Well, I certainly don’t remember ever being hungry and you know, we always love Christmas and I cannot remember one Christmas that I didn't feel like I was the luckiest kid in the world, Even though now I realize, we had hardly anything in terms of money. How did you hold all that together?

Well, you know, we got one sick day a month, and if I was sick I would still go to work, I was saving those days for Christmas. And at Christmas time, then they would pay me for those days, and you know it, around the first of December, all the rich peoples, they would clear our their children's toy chests, and they would take all these nice toys to the Salvation Army. And I would go there, and I would get me a huge box and I would go around and pick out nice toys, and I would get that for a couple of dollars, and then I would use the other for fruit and for food, and so it seemed like we had a big Christmas, but I never did tell you it was a Santa Claus, cause I said that I cannot give no man credit for what…

I know I speak for the rest of the kids who aren’t here, and tell you how much we love you, and how much we appreciate the sacrifice that you went through, and the guidance and leadership which you were teaching us, and I think it's helping us all be better parents.

You know, my whole heart was my kids, and the Lord blessed all of them. And I'm so grateful.

Carrie Conley with her son, Jerry Jonson in Detroit, to see photos and to make reservation for your own interview,visit storycorps.net. While you are there, learn more about storycorps’ first book,listening is an act of love, out in paperback now, major support for storycorps is provided by the state farm and by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting(CPB,公共广播公司). Our podcasts are supported by the Fetzer institute as part of its campaign for love and forgiveness.

Learn more at loveandforgive.org. All storycorps’ interviews are housed at the American folklife center at the library of congress.

Griot interviews are also archived at Smithsonian national museum of African and American history and culture. Listening for storycorps on the radio, Fridays on NRP's morning edition.

This is Katie Simon for storycorps’podcast. Thanks for listening.