Interview conducted as part of the Nash County Cultural Center’s Oral History Project. Julia Mae Harper Tingen describes her childhood life on a tobacco farm. She covers her family, self-education, enjoyment, and other memories. Her grandmother dipped snuff and her father chewed tobacco. Tingen and other children would eat sweetened cocoa on a toothbrush. Ethel and Jimmy Crusenberry lived upstairs. Their father, Mr. Vandiford, had a car. Tingen's mother died shortly after she and her siblings were born. Her father married Ruth, and they all lived together with her father's grandparents in the old Jeffrey homeplace. Tingen's great-grandfather was a prisoner of war at Point Lookout, New Orleans, on June 1, 1864. Her grandmother on her birth mother's side was named Batts and lived in Rocky Mount. Ruth worked in the field as her husband's right hand (he was going blind). Tom Tarrington lived in the neighborhood near Cobb's store at Benvenue, and picked on their father. Frances Jolly, Tom Jolly's second wife, had a farm that later became a golf course. She describes how the Crusenberries came to rent from them, as well as meals they would all have.