“I’m turning 100 in January. My grandparents owned the property where the Dew Drop Inn is in Mobile. They had a big home and a small restaurant there. Back then, Old Shell Road was made out of shells. People rode horses on it; my mother and aunt would ride as fast as they could.
I grew up in New Orleans and loved it. The movie theater was diagonally across from us on North Rampart–nine blocks from Canal Street. Movies only cost a penny for us. We walked to town all the time. We put cardboard in the bottom of our shoes during the Depression, and Mama made our clothes. But we always had something to eat and a place to live. Everybody was in the same boat.
I had an older brother and a twin sister. I loved being a twin; she was a part of me. My sister was happy-go-lucky and didn’t meet a stranger. I was shy and quiet. When I graduated from high school, one girl wrote in my yearbook, ‘Does Rose ever talk?’…