The following is the oral history of February 2010 Living Treasure Iva Morse. It was recorded and transcribed by Nancy Theiss on Oct. 1, 2009. The Living Treasure Program is a joint endeavor of the Oldham Era and Oldham County History Center.

I am Iva Barbee Morse, I was born over near where the Seventh Day Adventist Church is now, in Pewee Valley, Aug. 5, 1919. My parents had built a house there. My father was James Barbee and my mother was Alvia Netherton Barbee. I was always known as a plant or animal doctor when I was a child- if a plant was dying I could get it to live or if a little bird broke its wing- I would fix it!

I always got along with animals and always got along with plants. Back when we lived in Pewee Valley, my mother was having her card game, they called it 500s instead of bridge, back then when we lived in Pewee Valley, she could put up twelve tables downstairs for the card game. She was having her card game, and the dog started barking and the people that lived next to us we called Mammy and Pappy Gray, the dogs treed a little skunk over there. And Daddy said that he would never forget, as long as he lived, I had on a yellow, organdy dress, white socks and black patent leather shoes, and I went down and rescued the little baby skunk. And I had its little baby paws around my neck and I walked in on the front porch and the women exited the back! Mother liked to died!!

I had gardens and quite a bit of fruit and of course, I was always in the top of the trees! They had pears, and apples and cherries. I got a snapping turtle one time that the family didn’t appreciate- it came up in the back lot where the apples trees were and I took it up to the house. Mother didn’t really care for animals that much!

I was never a destructive child but I would take it apart and put it back together. Daddy said that whenever I went to parties as a child, he would come and get me and never look down- I would always be up on something, the chest of drawers, he said I had a prehensile tail.

I was by myself so much. When I was born Daddy had a black pointer, named Queen,that had pups at the same time and she took care of me, just like her pups! And mother often would leave, and there was a black woman that would come from LaGrange, she weighed about 350 pounds and we called her Aunt Blanche. Mother put a quilt out in the yard, and she had to go early and she knew that Aunt Blanche was coming down on the street car, and Queen would sit there on the edge of the blanket and look after me. When I would decide to crawl over Queen, I guess I thought she was asleep, Queen would pull me back by my diapers. Daddy had pictures of that!

The Post Office at Pewee Valley, everyone used to collect there who grew-up in Pewee Valley. People would invite each other to tea. Miss Mamie Johnston, Miss Johnston, Mrs. Melone, Miss Fannie Craig, Holly Jacobs and all those. All the different activities were decided there for the day. In Pewee Valley, you may not see someone for six months but when you were sick, had a baby or needed anything, people came to help.

Miss Kate Mathews was a famous photographer in Pewee Valley and one day she called Momma and ask if I could pose for her for a Living Statues photography contest. I had long red curls that I cut off myself, so Miss Kate made up a paste of flour and water and put it in my hair to make it look like a statute. She got second place in the contest!

We lived close to the trolley at Houston Station. I went to Anchorage School on the train and come back on the trolley. It turned at Pewee Valley and went back. Now my grandmother, Miss Craig, Mrs. Laughton, Mrs. Johnston, Mrs.McCullough, and some of her friends, would ride their horses down to Frankfort Ave and sometimes the mud was so deep, she said it would be to the horse’s knees. And they would go down to the hotel to the Palmer Garden and have lunch. And where you got to E. P. Sawyers, at the grocery, the men would meet them because it would be getting dark.

The first school I went to was Mrs. Bockleys, I was five and she taught you what forks to use and the alphabet. And then I went to Pewee Valley school for two years. It had three rooms but only used two. Mrs. Craig’s and another teacher was there, and every time it would rain it would flood in that school. There was a hole in the floor under each desk where the run would run out and a big stove in the corner at the end of the room. When I was a Pewee Valley School, Kate Cochran, her mother married Charlie Cochran, my mother’s cousin, well, we went to visit and Kate was sick. Mother was talking and not paying any attention to me and I went in Kate’s room. They thought she had diphtheria and found out she didn’t but they gave me the shot for diphtheria and I got it and lost a year of school. You give me a shot and I get it! Another time, my senior year in high school, I only went 5 weeks, I had scarlet fever, mumps and flu!

I had quite a big of problems, physically, when I was little and they put me in Anchorage School, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th grade I think and I was sick most of the time and I had to take the 7th grade at Crestwood again. At Crestwood, we didn’t have much activities there, we had basketball. I played volleyball but we didn’t have any competition to play with. Mr. Peterson and Mr. Ellis were principals and when I graduated Mr. Kraft was principal. My classmates were Ruth Lowry Lewis, Charles Baumeister, Dutch Engelhardt, Lucille Lindsey, Travis Irvin, there were 23 in our graduating class and I think there are five left today.

My father had a stroke when I was 9 years old. We were going to build a big stone house and move back here to the family farm. They came and were going to stake it out on the Monday, and he had a stroke on Saturday so, my parents decided to move back into the old house on the farm and redo it. My mother got three architects to look at it- she was good to redo an old house. The farm was a land grant and came from the Revolutionary War. There were six brothers and James Barbee is the one who settled here. Jimmy Morse, my son, was the 8th James Barbee to grow up here.

My father graduated from a Methodist School College over at Pewee Valley-they thought he was going to be an author he went to W. VA to the Southern Railroad- and became an engineer and then he married his first wife, Elizabeth Jenkins- they had one daughter-I adored her- all Daddy’s people were Pluckebaums- she had the first dotted eyes I had ever seen- and when she closed her eyes she had the longest lashes you have ever seen. I was her little sister and you better never look cross-eyed at me, she would take care of me.

I used to visit my mother’s family that lived in LaGrange. My grandmother and grandfather Netherton’s house was right across from the old post office where the Laundromat is now. We had two big cherry trees and I would stand on the iron fence and grab the limbs and would go up there and no one knew where I was. And then Mr. Gatewood’s store on Main Street, he had two fox terrier dogs and I used to go up there, and they would have a big packing case with a mattress in there for the dogs, and I would take a nap in there, many a time, with the dogs!

Jack Starkey, who later became known as Buddy Pepper, was my first boyfriend. I was a little bit older than he was. He used to play The Old Rugged Cross for granddaddy and he would jazz it up and make Granddaddy so mad! He could play the piano, even when he was a little boy. Anything he heard, he could play. He was the perfect gentleman. I didn’t see him after he moved to Louisville and then went to Hollywood but I used to see him in the movies!

After high school, I went to U of K, but I didn’t finish, I came home because Daddy was sick. But I lived at Pratt Hall and in the sorority Sigma Tau Alpha when I was at UK. And I started working for L&N, I was an accountant for L&N for 32 years and first I would take the train, but they changed the train so I usually would ride with Mr. Russell and others. I started July 3, 1941 for L&N and in 1943 I went into service. I went in as an apprentice seaman, I could have waited two weeks as an officer in the Navy. We were shorthanded when I was in the service and I did a little bit of everything. I was stationed in the Navy hospital in Charleston SC and worked as a nurse’s aide, did office work and was an assistant to the doctors. A lot of people didn’t know it, but there were, what we called, the German Wolf Packs patrolling our coastline. They were German U-boats and I can remember one time they torpedoed a French cruiser, right outside the Charleston harbor. I was later stationed in Dublin, GA at the Navy hospital and was a scrub nurse for tonsillectomies on soldiers. When they had bad tonsils they would go into rhemuatci fever- the soldiers came form everywhere.

I met my husband when I was young at the Anchorage School. We married in 1956 and moved to Buechel and Jimmy was born in Norton Infirmary and then mother had cancer and I took her to my place to Buechel but she wanted to come back home here, on the farm. I brought her back out here, Jimmy was a year old, in January, and mother died the next month. And it was better to raise him in the country anyway so we stayed here. My husband was a musician, and he worked for Lawrence Welk, just for two weeks though. He tuned and repaired pianos- he could play anything- he favorite was trombone and the bass violin. I was interested in taking care of Jimmy and didn’t go to hear him much.

I was working for L&N and raising Jimmy in the 50s and 60s. I was a 4-H leader with Virginia Stoess. I taught entomology, forestry, geology, weed control, and something else. That was quite an experience. We had 15 kids in our club. I took Jimmy and his friends to 4-H camp over in East Kentucky for several years. I remember taking the kids to the creek and there were a lot of mussel shells- one of the children even found a pearl! Even when I was young, I was involved in 4-H. When I was little, I went to 4-H camp in Shelbyville where they have the county fair. We were taught to make a pillow case out of a sheet and fill it with straw and we could sleep on it. I remember when we were there one time, spring peepers were out all over the place. Some of the girls were scared to death but I loved it and they were jumping all around where we slept.

My father taught me most everything I know about the outdoors- I have always loved the outdoors. My Dad liked to hunt and fish, I don’t like to kill things. Today I take care of the farm and animals and I used to crochet a lot but not quite so much anymore. I learned to crochet tablecloths and all kinds of things through 4-H when I was growing up. Animals and plants have always been important to me. God gave us animals and plants to give us food and protection and medicine to help us live. We need to help plants and animals because they make us feel better.