JM: You saw the photos, right?

JK: Yes I did, and I was sure glad to get ‘em. I sure appreciate it.

JM: What did you think of those photos?

JK: I just really couldn’t believe it. I absolutely could not believe it. All of these years, and then something like that would come up.

JM: How old are you, sir?

JK: I’ll be 75 next month. I was born in 1932.

JM: You told me when I briefly talked to you before that you knew your father did this kind of work as a child. You told me that he told you a little about it.

JK: Yeah, he did. He had a younger brother and a younger sister that were still at home. And back in those days, the older folks like his mom didn’t have any means of support whatsoever. So my father worked out there on the dairy farm, and he had a brother that worked there, too. If I’m not mistaken, it was around three dollars or a little better a week that they made.

JM: Well, that’s what the caption actually said. It said he made $3.25 a week.

JK: He told me stories about that. And he said him and his brother would come home at the end of the week and bring what they made and give it to their mother. And she would allot each one of them a dime a piece. And that’s what they had to spend, a dime a week.

JM: What was his brother’s name?

JK: Herman.

JM: When did you lose your father?

JK: He died in ’73.

JM: What did your father do when he grew up?

JK: When I was four years old, we moved to a cemetery, and he was caretaker for five years. He mowed the lawns and dug the graves by hand. All that was done by hand back in those days. They furnished us a house. That was St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Bowling Green. And when we left there, he got in the timber business, and Dad done real well for a while. Dad was one of those kinds of fellows that was just sort of happy-go-lucky. If he had a pocket full of money, he didn’t worry about it ‘til he run out, and then he’d make some more. He got real good at buying and selling timber. He was at it so long, that he could go through a truck of timber and estimate how many board feet was in it. But he didn’t have much education. He could barely sign his name. He did it all in his head.

JM: When did he stop doing that job?

JK: He did it ‘til he got to where he wasn’t able to work.

JM: What kind of house did you live in?

JK: Well, we just lived in a small, maybe two-bedroom house.

JM: What was your father’s full name?

JK: Dad’s full name was Edgar Leslie Kitchens, but his nickname was Doc. And the reason his nickname was Doc was that he was the seventh son. And I don’t know that you know about that or not. Back in those days they believed the seventh son had the powers to heal people. And he told me that when he was growing up, neighbors would bring their kid over with warts, and he’d rub the warts and they thought they would disappear and stuff like that. It’s an old-timey way of thinking about things. That’s how he got the name of Doc, and he went by that all his life.

JM: When he was called upon to do healing, did he have any faith that he might be doing something good?

JK: Yes, he did. And his mother did, too.

JM: Your mother was Adeline?

JK: That was my mom.

JM: And when did she die?

JK: Well, it was eight months after Dad died. She had a stroke and Dad was taking care of her, and we thought, you know, that she was a lot sicker than my dad. But my dad had a heart attack, and he died before she did.

JM: Did you go to college?

JK: No. But I had a brother that did. He went to Western Kentucky.

JM: What did you do for a living, sir?

JK: Well, I went in the army. I was drafted in ’52. I worked for the Pet Milk Company in Bowling Green for 24 years. I drove a truck and I worked in the laboratory testing butterfat. People that sold milk to the company, you know, I’d check the butterfat in their milk.