Abstract
In this 2025 interview, Marion Anita Gardner discusses her early life in Cleveland, memories at Olivet Institutional Baptist Church, and her eventual move to the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood. Gardner describes her work as the founder and CEO the Concerned Citizens Community Council on Kinsman Road, her work as a machinist at TRW, and her early education. At the end of the interview, Gardner expresses her love for Cleveland and leaves a message for future generations.
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Interviewee
Gardner, Marion Anita (interviewee)
Interviewer
Carubia, Ava (interviewer)
Project
Union-Miles
Date
7-1-2025
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
87 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Marion Anita Gardner Interview, 01 July 2025" (2025). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 483024.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1399
Transcript
Ava Carubia [00:00:00] So I have a little spiel I read at the beginning of the interviews, which is today is July 1, 2025. My name is Ava Carubia, and I’m here on Kinsman interviewing Ms. Marion Anita Gardner for the Cleveland Regional Oral History Project. Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed today.
Marion Anita Gardner [00:00:15] Well, you’re quite welcome.
Ava Carubia [00:00:17] And can you please state your name and the year you were born for the record?
Marion Anita Gardner [00:00:24] The year this year?
Ava Carubia [00:00:27] The year you were born?
Marion Anita Gardner [00:00:28] Oh, 1952.
Ava Carubia [00:00:29] And then can you state your name?
Marion Anita Gardner [00:00:30] My name is Marion Anita Gardner.
Ava Carubia [00:00:34] And then where were you born?
Marion Anita Gardner [00:00:35] Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
Ava Carubia [00:00:37] All right, so I want to start from there. How did you get up to Cleveland?
Marion Anita Gardner [00:00:41] It’s an actual funny story. My mother was eight months pregnant and my father got a new commission and he sent her this beautiful picture of all him and all his medals. And they’re at a bar in Biloxi, Mississippi. And there are him and a few of his friends. And down at the end, there’s this white woman smiling, but she’s hugging on one of the guys.
[00:01:14] And my mother jumped on the first thing smoking. Now, in 1952, you were not allowed on public transportation that far along because they didn’t allow pregnant women to stop transportation. She didn’t get caught until she got close to Mississippi. And that’s why I was born in Mississippi, because she didn’t like all that.
[00:01:48] She saw that one woman all the way down on the end hugging and smiling, this one guy, and she said, oh, hell no. And that’s why out of all six of my siblings, I’m the only one born in Mississippi. Every. Everybody else was born in Cleveland, Ohio.
Ava Carubia [00:02:08] So how old were you when you moved up here?
Marion Anita Gardner [00:02:10] I was about. I think they allowed her to come after I was six weeks old.
Ava Carubia [00:02:16] Okay.
Marion Anita Gardner [00:02:16] Yes.
Ava Carubia [00:02:17] And then when you came up to Cleveland, where were y’ all living?
Marion Anita Gardner [00:02:20] Quebec, as somebody Quebec, I don’t know how everybody pronounces it, but it’s off 105. It’s between Cedar and Quincy.
Ava Carubia [00:02:31] And how long were you living over there for?
Marion Anita Gardner [00:02:35] My family is still there. Yes.
Ava Carubia [00:02:38] So what do you remember from your early life in that area?
Marion Anita Gardner [00:02:41] I remember living around my, my entire family. My mother’s, my mother’s, my grandmother, my mother’s mother lived in the house 9606 Quebec. My father and mother lived in the house. My cousin Ruby and her parents lived in the house it was all of us. We were all in that house. My mother’s oldest sister, Aunt Juanita, and my her husband, Uncle Jit, and Franny Meatballs, my cousin.
[00:03:22] They lived in the house. Everybody lived in that house. I remember nothing but family. I remember we had three kitchens, one in the basement. We had one on the first floor and one on the second floor. And you could just go from kitchen to kitchen just eating. Somebody was always cooking, somebody was always up.
[00:03:46] It was just my, my grandmother’s sister lived across the street. My whole family lived on Quebec. It was just wonderful. I remember learning how to swim in Gassaway Swimming Pool with my uncle Maceo, my mother’s baby brother, my father. All the men had all the kids in the pool. It was just a huge family situation.
[00:04:14] It was wonderful. You could just go from anywhere in the neighborhood. Everybody knew everybody.
Ava Carubia [00:04:22] And what kind of stuff did you like to do as a kid?
Marion Anita Gardner [00:04:27] Oh, I was a horrible tomboy. We used to have relay races, races around the neighborhood. All the neighbors were sitting on the front porch and all the kids used to be in the middle of the street. And we would have relay races all the way around the neighborhood. I remember Mr. Frosty’s ice cream truck used to come around and everybody knew my aunt sister was good for a cone.
[00:04:51] Yeah, but you had to be the first one to run to her and say, aunt sister, do you want a banana split? I loved it. I loved you. My aunt’s sister had the after hour joint on the street. You know, it was absolutely the coolest neighborhood. It was just there was even white people.
[00:05:13] The Carases lived on the street. It was. Mr. Johnny was building a boat in the front of his house on the street. Mr. and Mrs. Green lived next door to us. Beverly and Debbie Minor lived next door. I remember we met Jim Brown because their father was his attorney and he was always sitting on the porch.
[00:05:47] We was making a lot of noise too. Oh my God. Ms. Beverly was so upset. That’s the first time we ever got called pickaninnies too. Yeah, my mother was tiny. You could hear her all over the neighborhood. My father, oh, she. Oh, she ran her house. My mom ran the house. She was everything.
[00:06:23] When she said stop, even my dad stopped. And my father was all of 6, 6’7 and my mother wasn’t even 5ft. It was just, it was just a neighborhood. The everybody knew you too, so there wasn’t too much you could do. And at the time the teachers from Bolton School lived in the neighborhood.
[00:06:52] So you know, Ms. Scott, all of them lived in the neighborhood so there wasn’t too much you could get away with. The swimming pool in the summertime was everything. You could just run across the street, go through the alley. Everything right there. If a neighbor said, you did it, you did it. You couldn’t explain.
[00:07:17] Was just. It was just a neighborhood, and it was just loaded. I mean, it was packed, kids everywhere. There was Mr. Johnny’s Atomic Market right there on Quebec. And right down the street was the supermarket. Well, it was a market. It was a store. Neighborhood store. Ms. Rosetta owned the dry cleaners right across the street from the store.
[00:07:51] Then it was just. And then next block, 100 Street. Mr. Johnny’s brother had Quebec Food Market. Then across the street from there was Punchies. And that’s where we used to go there and get comic books and sodas. It was just three stores right there. Boom, boom, boom. And then a place where you could get sodas.
Ava Carubia [00:08:22] And where did your parents work?
Marion Anita Gardner [00:08:24] My mom, she mostly stayed home with us because she had five kids. But every now and then she would do day work. My father was construction. He was always working. Some construction company it was. We lived in my grandmother and grandfather’s house, you know, and my grandmother. Grandmother lived downstairs.
Ava Carubia [00:08:53] And then what would y’all? What was the name you referred to when you talked about the neighborhood you were living in? Like, what would you call.
Marion Anita Gardner [00:09:00] All I know is we were all Robinsons. Because my grandfather was the head of the house. So they used to always say, was one of them Robinson kids. Even though we were Mills’s. You know, my father was a Mills, you know, we were just Robinsons because they all knew who we were. One of them Robinson kids.
[00:09:21] All you had to do was tell them what we did. And they could just about tell you which kid was capable of doing that. And nine times out of ten, it was always me. Yeah, I was always doing the flips in the middle of the street. I got in trouble one time because they said, ’Nita, I’d give you a nickel if you do cartwheels all the way to school.
[00:09:44] Bolton Elementary School on Carnegie.
Ava Carubia [00:09:48] Is that where you went to school?
Marion Anita Gardner [00:09:49] I went to school at Bolton Elementary on Carnegie. At the end of the day, I got that nickel. Did I get home and get a whooping? Yes, because all. Everybody saw my panties. I didn’t care. I got that nickel. I was just kind of strange. When I was growing up, I think I was the first one in my family to like what was known as white music.
[00:10:20] You know, Boss Staggs, Blue Dog Night. I was kind of a. Kind of crazy person because I could sing Nesun Dorma from Puccini. Did not know what I was saying, but I could sing that song because I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. I used to get into it with all my sisters and brothers because my mother said, look, let her listen to WXY 1260 for hour.
[00:10:53] ’Nita. That’s all we can stand. That’s all we can stand in this house, right? And. Yeah, but every single summer, my mother. My mother, God bless her, she. She knew me. She would gather all of us around in the summertime because she has so many kids. She says, what are you going to do?
[00:11:16] And she did that because she knew what I wanted to do. I either went to Cooper Art School in the summertime or either the Illuminating Cooking School or something. Always had something to do. I was always volunteering. [Background noise]
Ava Carubia [00:11:41] That’s okay. Yes.
Marion Anita Gardner [00:11:44] I always had something I needed to do. I even couldn’t go to the same school as them. I had to go to Jane Addams. I wanted so much to be a lady. I was the. Oh, my God. Every time you see me, I had a black eye, you know, stomping pop bottles, stick fighting with guys, touch football.
[00:12:11] I didn’t even kind of know I was like a girl girl. You know what I’m saying? I. I hated my brother because he got all the cool gifts. They kept giving me these damn dolls. Oh, look at Nita. You got a doll. He got six shooters. He got caps. They sound like real guns, you know, I used to have to bribe him to get his toys.
[00:12:41] He always got a bow and arrow, you know, I used to show them how to make perfect targets, you know? Let me show you how to use it. You know, I was always not like them, but that was them, you know, And I always felt like them. You know, I wanted to go to Jane Addams, so I would be a lady.
[00:13:07] Went to Jane Addams a [unclear] every day. Oh, my God. But I love that school. By the time I was. I used. I sleep. Sleep a lot. They thought there was something. As a matter of fact, they thought my mother was drugging me because I sleep all the. If you didn’t have my attention, I was sleep or drawing.
[00:13:34] I would always get on the fire escape with stacks and stacks of paper and draw all day. Westside Story came out. I lost my mind. I would sit all day, all day. My mother said, [unclear] she’s not bothering you. She’s not doing anything. She’s not fighting. Leave her alone. One of the craziest things about, you know, my family came from whooping your butt.
[00:14:04] They whooping your butt and my mother was the queen of whooping your butt. And there was this young lady by the name of Vicky Blue. They were the blues they lived on 91st Street right to this day. I love that girl. But Olivet Institutional Baptist Church. OM Hoover. We were the echoes of joy. Quiet.
[00:14:38] And we weren’t. We didn’t even know we were poor because we had so many family members. We always were in the movies. We always. But you had to go to church. Had to go to church. You couldn’t go to the movies if you didn’t go to church. Christmas service is sunrise service. I had this beautiful.
[00:15:06] I’ll never forget that dress. It was a brocade, and it had, like, a Chinese collar to it, and it was white brocade, and it was a tiny red trim around it. It just. Oh, it was beautiful. Oh, I couldn’t believe my mom got me that dress. I looked so much like a girl.
[00:15:28] Oh, I just. I just twirled and twirled and twirled, and I thought it was beautiful. I think that’s why I like Westside Story so much, because Maria had a red dress I really connected with, but I was real young, then. And
Ava Carubia [00:15:47] How old were you?
Marion Anita Gardner [00:15:48] Oh, my God. I had to be about 11 years old.
[00:15:53] And I’m in church. We’re in Olivet Institutional Baptist Church under Hoover. Everybody was there. The whole neighborhood was in Olivet Institutional Baptist Church. And I’m there. I got my bangs, and my mom gave me bangs in my hair, even though it was a big roll of hair. Abraham had the two [unclear] to hold there, you know, I still had the braids in the back, but I still knew I was so gorgeous that day.
[00:16:27] When we’re in church at Olivet and everybody. And we’re in our robes and the whole family’s going down on Sunday morning, swinging till we get up in the altar. It was the perfect Sunday service. My parents are there. They’re all smiling, and all of a sudden, there’s this. And you hear all this giggling.
[00:16:54] And you can’t turn around like this because your parents are looking at you, you know, and you’re going like. So the parents are like. Somebody said, ’Nita, they say, your mama took that dress out of the garbage because that’s Vicki’s dress. This is. No, this is my dress. No, no, no, no, no.
[00:17:20] Vicki says your mother took it out of the garbage because that was her dress. So I’m like, now everybody knows. Don’t do that to me. Every. They did it on purpose. And so finally, somebody grabs the back of my collar and pulls it back. And you know what they did? They always wrote their kids’ name and there was Vicky Blue’s name in the dress.
[00:17:51] And everybody, everybody’s laughing and the parents, some of the parents are starting to stand up like this and everybody’s terrible. So now everybody’s laughing behind me and pinching. Yep. And it’s all going through the whole p-. I didn’t say anything. I just stood up and said, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me. And I moved on down, moved on down.
[00:18:12] Then instead of coming down, I went up and I went over and I stood in front of Vicki Blue. And I knocked the hell out of Vicki Blue in church Sunday morning, Christmas day. And I’m wailing her all of a sudden I just, I thought the angels picked me up. It was the pastor.
[00:18:37] Oh, I got my ass –that day and the day after that. I got about five whoopings that day. I mean, all I could do was sit at the. They took my toys. Girl stuff anyway. And everybody was talking about how I embarrass the family. Did not care. I just got it in my mind, she gonna pay for that.
[00:19:24] I’m sitting there at the table, cuz I got another whooping. And my uncle May still came in and said, what the hell is she doing? And I. And then he said, let’s go. I got another weapon. I did, I got another whooping. I got my ass took. I mean, I mean, I mean, I bet you I got five whooping, five whoopings from five different family members, right?
[00:19:50] No problem. I had to stay in my room. Couldn’t watch tv, couldn’t play. My food was brought to me and all of them like some, some of my siblings, you know. Okay, yeah. And my sister Ann shouldn’t have said nothing. So Vicki’s mother came over and her father came over and Vicki came over and I had to go in the room with Vicki’s mother and I got a.
[00:20:18] Yeah, yeah, okay, not a problem. Then I had to say I was sorry and I. You couldn’t say sorry. I’m very sorry and it won’t happen again. And I had to tell Vicki that. And I’m looking at the look on her face and I’m thinking to myself, oh, you can look out. So then school starts back up.
Ava Carubia [00:20:42] And where, which school is this?
Marion Anita Gardner [00:20:44] Bolton Elementary. And Vicki comes out with her. Vicki’s parents were very well to do. I think her father worked for the post office or something. She came out with her little pom-poms. What is that? Little fluffy thing that you put your hands in that is just totally. You don’t. You’re a muff.
Ava Carubia [00:21:05] Yeah.
Marion Anita Gardner [00:21:06] You don’t need it. It’s not supposed to be seen in a Black neighborhood. It’s taboo. She came out with a muff on and a hat. The match and collar that matched the code. And when we got halfway down the street, Vicky’s coat was tore off of her. Her hair was all over her head.
[00:21:26] Her muff was everywhere. I beat the cowboy shit out of her. And her brother Mickey didn’t say anything. Wow. You want some? Okay. By the time I got to school, you know how the neighbors. Okay, I got a whooping in school. Then I came home for lunch and I got another whooping. Then I went back to school and Ms.
[00:21:53] Yeah. Ms. Ford, Ms. Foster, Ms. Crossing Guard hit me with the stop sign. Okay. Then I had to come back home. And then by the time I got home, I got another whooping. Yeah. So then Vicki’s mother and father came over. What’s wrong with this girl? So anyway, I got another whooping. I had to apologize again.
[00:22:21] Then my mother walked me to school and picked me up. I mean she walked me to school the next day and she picked me up. Then when she didn’t walk me to school, she stood on the end of the street and watched me as Vicki and her brother talked shit all the way to school.
[00:22:38] Yeah. Yeah. You won’t do that. Two weeks later, Vicki got her ass whoopped again. And this time I tried to stomp her face. This time, all hell, everybody, the neighbor, who knows what. And my grandmother said, nobody else puts their hand on her. Nobody. My grandmother, she said, I need to know what.
[00:23:00] Nita doesn’t do that. Nita doesn’t do that, sweetest. What’s the problem? So I find, because you’re not. You can’t tell an adult. See in those days you couldn’t tell an adult. You couldn’t say. But she. You’re not allowed to do that. And I told her about Christmas Day. I told her. I told her.
[00:23:21] So they said, okay, well, this needs to stop. She gotta get it one more time. No, me, she’s not gonna get it one more time. You need to stop. This needs to stop. So I promised my grandmother that it was gonna stop. But if Vicky says anything else to me or her brother says anything else to me, I will take that ass whooping.
[00:23:45] I will. And, I mean, they used to beat you with extension cords in them days. No, they beat you until you damn near were unconscious. They beat you until they used to put you in a bathtub with alcohol and water. I never forget. I used to go to school and you know the little blue gym suits they used to put on?
[00:24:04] Everybody had whoopings all over their legs, their arms. You got your ass. Look. That’s what you did in those days. You got your butt beat. They not playing. But then again, I have also seen on 105 and Euclid Avenue, the police, you know, in the 50s where a kid’s acting a fool and the mother holding on to the kid, and the cop just said, you can’t do nothing with that kid.
[00:24:34] And whoop that kid’s ass in front of everybody. And there was nothing that could be done. Nothing. You know, I. I couldn’t believe that. But that’s what it was when we was coming up. So. Yeah, so. But Vicky Blue now? I see her now. Her son was murdered. Her only child was murdered.
[00:24:57] And it just broke my heart. It broke my heart. And she heard the gunshots when he got shot at. But it was years ago. And every time I see her, we just. That’s something that really resonated. I never forget that. And anybody that was in Olivet Institutional Baptist Church at that time will never forget that.
Ava Carubia [00:25:26] Where do you go to junior high?
Marion Anita Gardner [00:25:28] Rawlings Junior High School at Addison. I was the first girl to ever take wood class at Addison Junior High School. The first girl. Because they thought I was a boy. Because Marion is an O with O. They thought I was a guy. Yes. And they said I was one of the best ones.
[00:25:46] Yes. I loved it. My God, I loved it. The first time I ever took a professional art class was in the third grade at Bolton Elementary School. Because we had a few field trip to the art museum and I. And because it was in our neighborhood, we. I. Oh, my God. I could tell you every room of the art museum.
[00:26:10] I loved it. That was one place I always wanted to go to. Always. But I couldn’t stay there at night because for some reason, because of Epworth Euclid, that big church there. I thought vampires lived there, so. Yeah. Seriously. Believed in vampires when I was a kid. Yeah, I’m s-. Yeah, I told you I was strange.
[00:26:33] Seriously? Seriously. Epworth Euclid, that big church there by the museum. I always thought vampires because it was a Catholic Church. And every time you see a vampire movie, what would they always say? Espiritus sanctus. Only thing that could kill it was holy water. So vampires.
[00:26:59] Yeah. That’s how I learned those words. Vampire movies. Yeah.
Ava Carubia [00:27:03] So you had a good experience in junior high?
Marion Anita Gardner [00:27:07] Yeah, because most of the kids didn’t bother me because they knew I would bite. And I was thinking about biting girls in the face. If you thought they didn’t want to get beat, It was just a tomboy. And then I couldn’t understand why you didn’t like me. The next day, it’s over. What are you mad about?
[00:27:27] I don’t know. I was kind of strange. But I painted everything. I painted the basement. Baby said, where’s Nita? She’s in the basement. What is she doing in the basement? My basement. Was there no place you wanted to do? Not in those old houses. We went down there. I had painted all. All the walls. I stole from the school, but I painted murals all over the walls.
[00:27:56] Unbelievable. I used to steal so much when I was a kid because it was just we didn’t have it. I just guess how I don’t take nothing anymore. You know why I stopped taking stuff? We would all go to somebody’s house and my mother said, oh, here’s the thief right here. It’s a thief.
[00:28:19] Now, if she wants to go to the bathroom, anything gets stolen out of your house, check her, you know, And I would, you know, we all and everybody be looking at me and excuse me, can I go to the bathroom? Oh, you better take her. She’ll be ransacking your house. My mother believed in.
[00:28:42] calling the cops on me right now. No, she said, because if you. You’ll steal, you’ll lie. If you lie, you’ll steal, you know. So that broke me up. Girl, if it’s yours, it’s yours you gotta worry about. I was just a strange kid. When I was coming up, I always felt alone because I used to always want to paint my sisters.
[00:29:07] My oldest sister, Ann, she was into dating young, having a good time. I still to this day, don’t drink, don’t smoke. Only time I’ve really been high is when I’ve been in the hospital. You know, I will drink cough syrup or something like that if I got a cold because it puts you to sleep.
[00:29:32] And like I said, I love to sleep. I have always. I love to, shoot. Everything goes away when you’re sleeping. Everything except the nightmares of the night.
Ava Carubia [00:29:44] So then what year did you go to Jane Addams?
Marion Anita Gardner [00:29:47] I graduated. Jane Addams, 1970.
Ava Carubia [00:29:50] Okay.
Marion Anita Gardner [00:29:54] I liked it because it was all girls, because I really wasn’t in the guys, you know, I’m not gay, but I’m just. I don’t know how to date. I’m not a feminine type of girl. You know what I’m saying? I always wanted to be sexy. But like I said before, I poked myself in the eye trying to put on eyeliner, lipstick.
[00:30:17] I didn’t know how to pick it out. I never thought I was pretty or cute. You know what I’m saying? I just, you know, guys really didn’t look at me, you know, because I would beat their ass. They didn’t want to fight. I don’t know. I just wasn’t in the. I was more interested in.***
[00:30:42] I used to do. I used to go to the graves and do the charcoal rubbings on there. I was interested in history. By the time I was 15 years old, I knew every pharaoh from the First Dynasty to the 21st Dynasty. I cried for a week when I found out that Harvard Carter discovered them in the 1930s.
[00:31:09] I thought when I learned about it, it was something new. And I didn’t know. And I was like, you knew and you didn’t tell me? This is important. I thought it was just. I love anything ancient Egypt. Love history, Love history. Horrible at math. If it wasn’t for fingers and toes, I don’t know how I was going to make it.
[00:31:38] I’m a people person. I’m gullible. I tend to believe what you say is true before I find out it’s not. I. I like listening. Welcome to Mt. Pleasant. I like working with my hands. I like any kind of craft. Any kind. I always wanted to learn how to weave. So I did take some classes at Rainey Institute, then learned how to crochet.
[00:32:23] I learned how to knit. I make up my own arts and crafts. I love painting. That’s one of my favorites. I’ve taken a few professional classes, but I find out I like to do it on my own. I don’t know why. My head never shuts up. I have books and books and books and books and books.
[00:33:00] Things that I thought of and wanted to do, you know? I like to jump up in the middle of the night and write it down because I’ll forget it. The older I get, the more I stand. I’d rather stay at home and just be quiet. I tend to get in trouble when I talk because I’m extremely opinionated and I shouldn’t be.
[00:33:31] I always think of myself as the bumblebee. I go from flower to flower to flower to flower. Wow. I like. I like giving gifts, but I’m not good at accepting. I don’t like. If I do something, I don’t necessarily want you to know I did it. I want to be in the dark, you know, I like helping people, people.
[00:34:06] But I don’t particularly like to do that. Does that make any sense? Does that, you know, love my boys. Love, love, love my boys. And it’s not just my sons. It’s my. I’ve always been the boy type of mother. All his friends, they are so stupid. I gotta tell you something. They did.
[00:34:39] You ain’t gonna believe this. I came home one day because my house was the house. All the guys were there because they called my oldest boy Buck. They used to call them Squirrel when he. When he went to John John Adams and he became Squirrel. But everybody. I know when they talk about him, I know when they met him, because they’ll either call him Squirrel or Buck.
[00:35:09] Okay? They was all just, all upset, just crying. They all got the AIDS. What? We all got the AIDS. They was. I mean, just upset they’re gonna die. Aids. They all went to the dirty bookstore and bought some edible underwear. All the guys bought edible underwear and put them on. And they was just walking around, flashing, showing the girls.
[00:35:37] Yeah, come on, baby. Come on. Well, it’s nothing but sugar. And it just ate through their clothes. And they all got the scratching and itching, and they all were scratching and digging and itching through their clothes. So now they bought AIDS underwear. So they got AIDS from the edible underwear store. So they’re all in my house crying.
[00:36:03] They don’t know how to tell their mothers, but they are going to tell me. I said, I got this. No problem. Everybody just. Everybody get a towel, Take your jeans off. Took them, put them in the washing machine, went upstairs, put some baking soda and some warm water in the tub. Every. Everybody got to get in the tub.
[00:36:24] Okay? So. So everybody was. I said, it’s just sugar. And they was digging, too. So it was unbelievable. It was. I couldn’t believe how stupid boys were. And they was like, that’s it. That’s it. Yeah. So every now and then I bring it up because they’re all in their 50s now. Hey, how’s that AIDS going?
[00:36:55] Mama, don’t bring that up. Mama, don’t. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They are the dumbest things you have ever, ever, ever met in your life. And I love them. I. So I’m more. I have two great grandsons. I tell them all the time. Bring them over. Let me ruin them. Get the air off. Yeah, yeah.
[00:37:21] I tell them all the time. Just tell me all the time, mama, they don’t eat sugar and they can’t have this. I said, well, you better take them home. Cuz first thing I do, I said, let’s bake something. They’d be like, I love the boys. I’m not too good with hoochies. I have a great granddaughter.
[00:37:41] Imani. Loved her to death. Lizzo told her that she’s beautiful with no foam [unclear] I can’t get to that, but okay.
Ava Carubia [00:37:55] I want to go back a little bit. After you graduated from Jane Addams, what happened?
Marion Anita Gardner [00:38:00] What did you do? I married the idiot that I was going with. I signed up, I wanted. Well, I signed up for the Navy, but I hurt my ankle, so I was running, actually, I was just running.
Ava Carubia [00:38:20] And then how did you get to Mt. Pleasant?
Marion Anita Gardner [00:38:23] I bought. Okay. I was getting a divorce. Yay. And yes. And I, I, I went job hunting. I. My sister Pat. My sister Pat and I, she said we can. I said, that’s right. So we both went, we both pooled our money and we started job hunting. Okay? Because I left my husband, who was a total idiot, who was sleeping with everybody.
[00:38:52] And I met him at Rollins Junior High School. And I should have known better because he was three years older than me and I met him in the seventh grade. But he said things like, want me to tote that sack for you? Or you going over yonder? Oh, my God. I thought that was French.
[00:39:13] Oh, my goodness. Did you hear what he said? He wants to tote my sack. Okay. He was Southern, Okay. Yeah. I told you I was not the brightest thing in the world when I was a young girl. You know, he was sleeping with all the girls in school, but. And they would all come back and tell me, yeah.
[00:39:37] After the football game, he’s, taking her home. I’m taking. Yeah. He told me all the time, don’t worry about it. I’m sleeping with them, but I’m going to marry you. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. I guess I think I was the only virgin on a wedding night in the world.
[00:39:54] I don’t know. And it wasn’t much of a wedding night either, cuz I went home. No. Hell no. He’s taking your clothes off. I went home, okay? So that was. I started working at TRW Bell Division. And they didn’t want me because I had almost four years of college. And they kept saying, I’m sorry, we don’t have anything in office now.
[00:40:19] We only have stuff in the plant. And I was trying to get a divorce. I said, I don’t care, I will take it. Please give it to me, please. And they said, well, it’s. I said, I don’t Care. Okay, I took the job.
Ava Carubia [00:40:38] What year was that?
Marion Anita Gardner [00:40:40] It was in the 70s, early 70s. And oh, my God, I was so happy to get that job. I was thrilled to get that job. And then I started walking through that shop and saw all those. Oh, my God. Every time he came on the board I put him on. I just.
[00:41:01] I had to get on those machines. So I became a heavy duty machinist and welder. And to everybody else’s surprise, but not to mine, I was damn good. I was very good. And I used to listen to. Did you know they had guys there that had been on those machines since the 30s? And they was listening to them.
[00:41:31] They used to tell me all the time. No, no, listen to it. Listen to it. And they used to tell me all the time how they could hear a smooth grind or a bump or when it was time to change the wheel. These guys didn’t have an education. Some of them couldn’t read and write.
[00:41:46] And then it went on machines. Fascinating. It was fascinating to me. I loved it. I was made for it. I was, you know what I mean? Wasn’t a girly girl. You know what I’m saying? I wasn’t worried about scars or bruises or anything. You know what I’m saying? I didn’t have to have a conversation between.
[00:42:11] Because I’m real
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