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Interview #759: Theoryland: An Hour with Harriet McDougal Rigney, Entry #7
Matt Hatch
How do you think Jim’s experience of childhood in Charleston compared to your own?
Harriet McDougal
Well, Jim grew up real poor, and we were not, and I didn’t…I mean I grew up in the house I live in now, which is in the best part of town—BIG—I’ve forgotten whether you were there for the (TarValon.net anniversary visit to Charleston)—
Matt Hatch
I…I haven’t. I am coming!
Harriet McDougal
Well anyway, and it was…mother did a lot of yardwork, but she was a snob about food. My best friend lived down the street, and in that house, there was post-WWII margarine, which the dairy people, they controlled it, and it was white stuff in a bag with a yellow pill, and you’d have to mash it through the plastic to make it go yellow, you remember that horrible stuff?
Matt Hatch
Interesting…
Teri Hatch
I remember hearing about it.
Harriet McDougal
Oh, it was…yeah, awful. Mother wouldn’t have it in the house, and the only bread she would have in the house was Pepperidge Farm. She really ate and cooked and all of that, and Wilson was saying the other day, he remembered sitting at Jim’s mother’s table, and supper was mayonnaise sandwiches.
Matt Hatch
(laughs) I loved mayonnaise sandwiches.
Harriet McDougal
Yeah, but mother didn’t do that. I lived, really, a live of privilege as a child. Jim’s life was not. His father came back from the War, and when they married, his father got a job on the police force, and also painted houses on the weekend to make extra money, so it was pretty hard scrabble. And they then built a house with their own hands outside of town, and unfortunately put chlordane down in the cellar, in the foundation to kill bugs—nobody said it was not such a good thing to do—so it’s possible Mr. Rigney’s health problems might have had something to do with that. But I think Jim had a happy childhood.
Matt Hatch
Did your mother know Jim?
Harriet McDougal
No; neither of my parents ever met him.
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