Page 1 of 20 
 
Washington Women’s Heritage Project records, 1900-2000 
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
Miriamma Mae Carson 
May 10, 1992 
Cassette 2, Side 1 
 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  00:00 
10, ‘92 at Miriamma Carson's house. It is an interview with Miriamma Carson by Kirsten 
Anderberg. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  00:08 
As freely as it needed to. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  00:11 
During the births? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  00:12 
And the prenatal course. And also, we were getting fewer clients, and we're getting fewer clients, 
I think because the vibes are bad, because I noticed that whenever I was having trouble with 
Doris, our--and the number of new clients we got limited, and when my life was running 
smoothly, I would get a lot of new clients. And so that was that. Then the clients that I were was 
getting were sort of the lunatic fringe [laughs], toward the end there. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  00:43 
Oh no. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  00:44 
And it was like every client was a tremendous amount of work and a tremendous amount of 
hassle, and I got really ripped off by this one client. And I realized that the reason--see, what we 
did was we learned how not to get ripped off, sort of, and so we did the stuff with her, but 
Barbara also--Barbara's husband was having a crisis, so Barbara was--having a stroke, and 
Barbara's having to deal with that. So, I was doing it more by myself and I did all the stuff we 
learned on this woman, and it didn't work. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  01:17 
During labor? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  01:18 
Page 2 of 20 
 
No, during her pregnancy, to try to get the money out of her and afterwards. And then I realized 
that you can't just do the stuff you've learned, because if that doesn't work, then you have to 
invent new things. And I couldn't invent new things because my mind couldn't work well. So it's 
sort of like the changing times. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  01:38 
Like, you had to become a bill collector on top of being a midwife [laughs]. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  01:41 
Yeah, and we did learn how to do that. And this woman just sort of ripped off everybody, I 
discovered later. It was really quite a little scene. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  01:49 
Really? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  01:50 
And she was... But, I mean, it wasn't that big a deal. It was more that I didn't handle it right, you 
know, because I was sort of too proud. So. And then I didn't realize how nice it was going to be 
not to be on call, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  02:03 
That's what would seem like the real drain to me, is you're just constantly on call. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  02:16 
Well, it wasn't a problem for all those years that I did it. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  02:19 
And you were pretty casual about it. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  02:21 
Yeah. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  02:22 
Seemed like I called you once, and you just said, Forget it [laughs]. Call me later. I was like, Oh, 
my God, this could be it, but you acted like it wasn't. So I went, Okay. I didn't want to bother 
you. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  02:23 
Well, you--sometimes you can tell. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  02:24 
Yeah, that was really weird.  
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  02:28 
Quickly. Yeah, carrying the beeper was wonderful, because you have a beeper and you can go 
anywhere and you can do anything. Also, they changed the goddamn fucking phones. 
Page 3 of 20 
 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  02:50 
They changed what? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  02:50 
The phones! It used to be, if you have a beeper, you have--you can use any payphone. You pick 
up the payphone, you hit the numbers, you get into the computer. You hit some more numbers. 
You get your messages, no problem. Then the goddamn phone company dissolved, and all these 
Mickey Mouse payphones get set up, and half of them, you can't hit the numbers once you get in 
the computer. So you put in your quarter, you get into the computer, and you can't go anywhere.  
 
Kirsten Anderberg  03:20 
Oh, lovely. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  03:20 
You can't ever get your messages. So it was such a pisser. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  03:21 
Right. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  03:22 
So, I carried my own phone around. But when you're downtown, you know, where are you 
gonna plug it in? So, it was just, really... 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  03:29 
Was that what they do, they plug their car phones into their car? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  03:32 
No, I mean, I plug it into people's houses because-- 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  03:34 
Oh, that's right, you can't, I remember now. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  03:35 
A touchtone. Some people have, you know, dials. I needed touchtone. And so that was just like 
this, major pisser. Just major. Just--it just ruined it. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  03:47 
Really? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  03:48 
Because you're so free with your beeper and the payphones, because the payphone’s everywhere. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  03:36 
Right. 
 
Page 4 of 20 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  03:52 
Just go up to-- 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  03:53 
Now you have to search for the payphone-- 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  03:55 
The right payphone. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  03:56 
Right. Oh no. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  03:58 
You know, and you don't know if it's the right payphone unless it says AT&T on it. And I never 
really got that down. How to tell that it was AT&T phone, because all of them--they seem to 
have bought their phones from AT&T, and then they change one thing on the labeling, you 
know. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  04:16 
I've tried to figure that out before, too. That's really weird.  
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  04:20 
Some of them are red, which is very helpful. You know that's not AT&T. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  04:20 
So did you ever get in a situation--in a birth where you felt you were in over your head, or you 
always just felt like you had total control of it? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  04:21 
Oh, no. You never felt like you had total control. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  04:25 
Really? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  04:26 
No, there were different kinds of over your heads. They were the kind like you, when it goes on, 
ever, ever, ever, and ever. And then there's a kind where things are happening, and when things 
were happening, then we would--you know, we got to the point where we thought we were over 
our heads, then we had two choices. One is to take the person in. The other is to call the U and 
talk to somebody. So we used to call the U and talk to somebody sometimes. And that was real 
nice. They were great. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  04:55 
Really? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  04:57 
Page 5 of 20 
 
So, we called them once, and they said, Please don't bring her in here, we have people in the 
hallways! Please take her to Swedish! I said, No problem. So, we went to Swedish, which, of 
course, was a disaster. Swedish is always a disaster. Hate that place. But anyway... 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  05:16 
But you seem to--do you feel you have an obligation to seem together, even though you're in a 
chaotic position? Like, do you front it off to the woman? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  05:25 
Of course! Absolutely! 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  05:26 
Like the stewardess on the plane that's crashing type thing, you know? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  05:28 
Always, always. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  05:29 
Really? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  05:30 
Of course. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  05:32 
And so then, how do you know when it actually is time to move to go to a hospital [laughs]? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  05:38 
Well, it--you know, we discuss it with a woman all along the way. You know, when we start--
first start thinking that's a possibility. And you know, we never don't keep our cool. That would 
be irresponsible. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  05:55 
Have any-- huh. Have any women ever just not been able to handle it, like, all of a sudden, at the 
last minute, decided they wanted not a home birth? They all were ready for it. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  06:10 
I wish Barb was here to answer that question. Two--um, I don't remember anybody. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  06:17 
Oh, who were any kind of mentors or role models for you? Did you have any that were, like, 
famous people? And then did you have any in regular life? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  06:30 
Well, I guess Mary Clarke, she comes to mind right away. She has a Women Strike for Peace in 
Los Angeles, and she was a lot of a role model, because her attitude, her sort of can-do attitude, 
really struck me. She was the head of Women's Strike for Peace in Los Angeles, Mary Clarke. 
Page 6 of 20 
 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  06:56 
Can-do in a practical way, or in a visionary way, or? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  06:59 
Well, I guess the combination, you know, she had her vision and... And then... Well, I guess the-- 
in the LA Times, they wrote an article about her once referring to her aliases, one of which was 
her maiden name, the other, which was her first husband's name [laughs]. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  07:32 
Sneaky, sneaky. Never be able to trace that.  
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  07:34 
It came up to me immediately that these were not aliases in the usual, accepted form--the 
meaning of the word, and her attitude toward it was just so great. You know, it was--oh, it was a 
quote, I think from the FBI report, is what it was. I mean, it was just--her-- 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  07:47 
I was going to say that could throw the FBI off for a year as your maiden name. Geez. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  07:59 
Her attitude was just so, you know--I don't know, like a combination of taking control and 
ignoring the bastards and getting on with what was really important [laughs]. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  08:16 
So when you were a kid, did you look up to somebody? I mean, you must have looked up to 
strong women somehow. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  08:24 
Well, my mother really was a strong woman in a lot of ways that I never considered as very 
important, because she was always falling all ov--falling apart all over the place, but she really 
did sort of keep things together. She handles money very well, and she couldn't ever stand to not 
be working, because she couldn't stand to be dependent. And, you know, she did a lot of house 
building. My father taught me to do plumbing so I can repair most plumbing things. I mean, I 
could when I was a child, he taught me how to change tires, so I certainly could do that. I mean--
well, our family had the attitude that we could do anything. And in the '50s, it was very much the 
fashion for girls to say, [in a high-pitched voice] Oh, I couldn't possibly do that! Oh! I tended to 
find this stupid and disgusting. And there were all these awful movies, you know, where the 
heroine would be being assaulted by the villain, and the hero would come and jerk him off of 
her, and be fighting with him on the floor and be losing, and she would be standing there going, 
[screams in a high-pitched voice]. It was our family's opinion that she should have taken off her 
high heel shoe-- 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  09:52 
And thrown them-- 
 
Page 7 of 20 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  09:52 
And hit him in the temple like David, you know. But of course-- 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  09:56 
Well, that would be a scary twist, using the lessons of the Bible against the patriarchy [laughs]. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  10:05 
The idea that women should--I got--did get sort of sucked into it, I think, to certain extent, but it 
was in the background, always the idea that it was just foolishness. I mean, my first husband 
handled the money, but I handled the money when all subsequent marriages. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  10:16 
Really? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  10:16 
Yes. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  10:16 
How'd you pull that off? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  10:17 
He did a really awful job, but--well, I just did it. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  10:21 
So you got married a lot. Was that good [laughs]?  
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  10:37 
Not very. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  10:37 
Are you gonna get married again?  
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  10:38 
Oh, probably. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  10:44 
Really? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  10:44 
I probably will.  
 
Kirsten Anderberg  10:45 
Why, if you're gonna do that, are you gonna go to medical school? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  10:48 
No, I'm not gonna go to medical school. 
Page 8 of 20 
 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  10:51 
No, too much for now? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  10:53 
Oh, god yes. I got married the first time because my first husband threatened he'd leave me if I 
didn't marry him, and I got married the second time because my first husband threatened he 
would do another custody case. He'd already done three custody cases. If I didn't get married. 
And I got married the third time to keep my husband out of jail. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  11:15 
Wholesome [laughs]. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  11:16 
So I'm not sure I actually wanted any of these, but I did love my third husband when I married 
him, I don't really regret marrying him. So there you are. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  11:29 
So can you--and you can totally trust men to marry him now, right? It's amazing. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  11:37 
Well, you know, trusting is an interesting word. I think that people can trust other people for the 
things that they know they can trust them for. So, I can certainly trust another man as long as I 
have the title to the house, a prenuptial agreement, an income of my own, and savings account of 
my own, and-- 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  12:05 
And birth control. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  12:06 
Well, I don't need birth control anymore because I'm too old. But yes. I mean, if you catch my 
drift [laughs]. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  12:13 
Are there men out there that can handle those agreements? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  12:21 
I don't know. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  12:21 
I guess there are. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  12:22 
I guess we'll find out. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  12:23 
Page 9 of 20 
 
We'll see. Yeah. So, if you--do have some tidbit of knowledge to lay on the generations coming 
[laughs]? You know, some great wisdom that you've learned in a nutshell? Now's your chance. 
[Yells] [inaudible]. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  12:59 
Jesus. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  13:00 
What'd you learn from all this time? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  13:03 
Oh god, so much. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  13:06 
What? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  13:06 
So much. Well, you know, Universities of California have--used to have anyway, this slogan, 
Lifelong learning. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  13:14 
The what? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  13:15 
Lifelong learning? I'm certainly a great believer in that. I don't know. I've learned so much. I 
can't really say-- 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  13:39 
Like what? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  13:25 
Anything specific. Let's see, well, I just think it's terribly, terribly important to respect 
everybody. You know, to respect yourself and to respect everyone, and people who go around 
not respecting people just get themselves in a terrible mess and get the world in a terrible mess. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  13:47 
But what do you do with like--okay, like the ultimate sexist pig and you're gonna respect him 
[laughs], so how does that work? There's the beautiful wisdom--[?we're dying there?]. How does 
that work? You, like, respect their shared humanness, or what's the deal? You just don't like their 
personality, but you respect them as a person? Because the hard part's respecting people you 
don't like. Isn't it? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  14:33 
Well, I guess what I've evolved in over the years of that is to spend as little time with such 
people as possible and to try to find the parts of them that are positive [papers rustling]. Because 
I think that part of people not respecting other  people, and certainly misogynists don't respect 
Page 10 of 20 
 
women, I think a lot of it is they're not respecting themselves or some portion of themselves, and 
so I always sort of have this feeling that you can improve the world a little bit if you're nice to 
everybody. But of course, you can't be doormat-y nice. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  15:19 
Yeah, that's the thing. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  15:20 
That's hard to do. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  15:22 
How do you not be dormat-y nice but be nice? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  15:25 
Well, I seem to finally be getting it, and maybe it's only possible when you're 50, I feel like. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  15:29 
Really? It's an age thing [laughs].  
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  15:31 
Maybe! 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  15:31 
Oh, good. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  15:34 
When I think about how I was treated as a young woman, I'm treated so much better now. I 
mean, you get ignored a lot when you're older, which is a real plus. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  15:44 
Yeah, I would like that. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  15:45 
Yes. And you get treated better, too. It's a combination, because there are a lot of men, I think, 
who are sort of turned on to women--I just figured this out, who are attracted to women, but their 
way of being--the way of expressing this, is to harass you.  
 
Kirsten Anderberg  16:04 
Oh, like your hair in the inkwells in school type thing. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  16:07 
Yes. Yes, exactly. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  16:08 
The creep is the one that likes you [laughs]. 
 
Page 11 of 20 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  16:10 
Right. Want to put you through it. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  16:12 
Yay. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  16:12 
Worse than inkwell, so you splatter on your clothing, yes. So when you get older, you don't--for 
one thing, any men that are attracted you are beyond the hair-in-the-inkwell stage because they're 
the same age, and-- 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  16:25 
Really, is it only on TV, they retain that jerkiness is in age? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  16:31 
Well, my experiences is. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  16:33 
That's good. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  16:34 
On the other hand, I meet men in places like the Unitarian Church and The Mountaineers, and--I 
don't know [inaudible]. [Laughs] It's not exactly the ones on television. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  16:43 
Right. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  16:44 
But I never did exactly [inaudible]. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  16:53 
So--and you were a socialist, is that right? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  16:55 
Right. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  16:56 
Are you still a socialist?  
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  16:57 
Yeah, sure.  
 
Kirsten Anderberg  16:58 
Really? And what is a socialist by your definition [laughs]? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  17:04 
Page 12 of 20 
 
That's always a problem, isn't it? 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  17:06 
Yeah. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  17:08 
Well, I think a socialist society, in my opinion, would be the where the means of production were 
controlled by the majority, not by just individuals or by a corporate sort of deal, completely. And 
where the citizenry as workers in particular had power over their work, and where nobody was 
living in the streets. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  17:53 
And who would implement these changes? The people themselves, the workers? Or would some 
states generate to this? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  18:05 
Well--workers--the unions were working on that kind of stuff in the '30s, you know. And then 
the unions kind of went on hold for most of the war, because naturally, they wanted to fight 
fascism. And then after the war, there was a big drive to get the communists out of the union--
unions. And so, they got the communists out of the unions. And a way that they did that was by--
well, a way that they did it and then a result of what they did was to focus only on economic 
demands. And so then, after the Second World War, the unions only focused on economic 
demands. They no longer focused on safety or on having anything to say about their work, and 
that was as a result of getting rid of all the people who had political consciousness out of the 
unions, which was done by a couple of those acts and Congress, which I can remember were on 
big witch hunts that went on after that. So, it was coming-- 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  19:08 
This was the McCarthy Era? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  19:09 
Right. Was coming from the unions, and--which is where it would come from, naturally. But-- 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  19:20 
So, who got rid of the socialist in the unions, the unions or the-- 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  19:23 
Well, there were a lot of people working on it. There was the government. Especially, you know, 
McCarthy and those kinds of people. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  19:23 
Is that why socialists don't trust the government? These kind of things? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  19:32 
Of course, because the government is controlled as much as possible by the capitalists who have 
the money to set the people up, and, you know, to run for office and to contribute to their 
Page 13 of 20 
 
campaigns and such. And then there was also--that's when the mobs moved into the unions, was 
at that same period, and--well, Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, was active in getting the socialists out 
of the unions. And the mobs helped get the socialists out of the unions too, because [laughs] of 
course, they survived [inaudible]. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  20:09 
Right. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  20:09 
So it's--it was part of the conservatism that happened at the same time. A lot of factors that went 
toward it. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  20:23 
And so, when you-- 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  20:24 
So, some businesses of in--have--a new style of management now is to have input from the 
workers. And so some businesses are doing it, and I don't know how that's gonna work out. I 
mean, it certainly is better for the individual worker at the moment. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  20:37 
I always thought socialism had something to do with changing the way the state was running 
itself too, though, like the government, not just the economics. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  20:45 
Well, I always have a hard time with all that, because the way our country is supposed to be is 
the people are supposed to have the power. And how things are set up is always quite different 
from how they actually happen. And so, I don't know, I'm not a brilliant thinker in these areas. 
[Laughs]. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  21:10 
It's just sort of--so many feminists seem to be socialist-rooted. When I--you know, as a young, 
budding kid looking at the socialist things--experiments in socialism, they've looked like 
patriarchal failures, and I'm trying to figure out why feminist-- 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  21:36 
Are you considering, like, Soviet Union and those other countries? 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  21:39 
Yeah, people that call themselves socialist, you know, or Cuba, you know, places that consider 
themselves socialist. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  21:48 
Well, that's communist, not socialist, for one thing, but for another thing, those countries grew 
out of what they were at the time and women had a lot of rights vis-à-vis men in those countries. 
A lot more rights than we had at the beginning of our feminist movement.  
Page 14 of 20 
 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  22:11 
Now, that's interesting comment. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  22:13 
Because women had higher positions in all those countries, as far as their jobs went. And there 
was, as far as childcare goes, they had factories and you could have nursing breaks and go nurse 
your baby. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  22:31 
Yeah, they sort of take us into account a little bit more. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  22:35 
Yeah. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  22:36 
Did you live through the Depression? No, your parents lived through Depression. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  22:39 
No. I was born in '41. Yes. My parents graduated high school in 1929. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  22:44 
Was it a big deal for them?  
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  22:46 
Oh gosh. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  22:47 
I mean, did their life--like you heard about it all the time? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  22:49 
Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh god, yes.  
 
Kirsten Anderberg  22:51 
In what ways did that come out? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  22:53 
Well, my father didn't go to college directly. He would work until he'd saved up enough money 
to go to college and he'd go to college for a year, and then he'd work and save up enough money 
to go to college for a year. And my mother's father was a minister, and her mother was a 
seamstress, and she went in college and she worked in the lunchroom, and they had these little 
cans of lunch meat. She put--made sandwiches, and she stole cans on a regular basis and hid 
them under her bed. And then when her mother ran out of food, then she'd ask her for her cans, 
and she'd bring her cans out, and they'd eat. And my mother's very into clothes, completely into 
clothes. And I think the agony of her child--of her young adulthood--young womanhood, was not 
having clothes because-- 
Page 15 of 20 
 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  23:47 
So she's obsessed with it now? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  23:47 
No, she was obsessed with it then. She loved clothes, she's obsessed with them now, too. She's 
always loved clothes. She loved clothes and she couldn't have them, and there were all these 
things that they would do, you know, getting another--an old dress and cutting it down. And she 
was big too. Everybody else in her family was little, so she couldn't have the hand-me-downs 
and shoes--her feet are large, and so she could never find shoes that fit her, because they made so 
few shoes during Depression, they didn't make a big variety of sizes. So she could never have a 
shoe that fit really. And she's fixated on her feet and on--was on ours. And thank god, because 
my feet are just rotten. So it's a good thing I had good shoes my whole life. I wouldn't be 
walking. And like, when the hems went down in 1930 I think--you know, the hems were up here, 
and then they were down there. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  24:35 
Feminist--there were just so many of them. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  24:36 
Oh, that was just so horrible, because all of a sudden, what do you do with your dresses? Well, 
some people cut the dress off here, put in a different material down there, you know, it was, 
suddenly, your dresses-- 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  24:37 
Were too short.  
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  24:38 
Weren't acceptable. Yeah, absolutely. It was just terrible. And then going to the dry cleaners, you 
know, some people tried to clean stuff at home, and they ruined them and were terribly upset, 
because their clothes were ruined. And gloves were required. And gloves are--get dirty, white 
ones, so quickly, so hard to clean, so hard to keep clean. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  25:08 
That glove thing is a trip. You probably did that as a kid, right? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  25:18 
Very little. I was going out-- and this was Southern California. If I'd been in the East Coast, I 
[?would have been?]. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  25:24 
And they get dirty after five minutes. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  25:26 
That's the thing! What could you possibly do with them? You'd get--anything you'd want to wear 
them for would be so your hands didn't get dirty, and they'll get dirtier. 
Page 16 of 20 
 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  25:27 
Thank God that went out. Yeah, they tried to give me some of them. My grandma sent me some 
of these gloves. I was like, What are these? You know, what do you do with them? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  25:33 
And you'd have--you know--and you couldn't, like, clean them off--you'd have--so it use chalk 
on, you know? Chalk your gloves. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  25:33 
You're kidding? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  25:33 
Yeah, chalk your gloves.  
 
Kirsten Anderberg  25:33 
How funny. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  25:33 
And you have to be careful not to touch anything, you know. Leave chalk marks. Oh, it's just all 
these awful things. And then stockings. You couldn't get stockings. Couldn't afford stockings, 
because they're all silk. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  25:48 
So what'd they do? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  25:49 
So they bought these things--darkeners for their legs that would sometimes, course, turn orange 
and mottle. And then they get a pencil and draw line up the back of their leg. I mean, was just all 
this awful stuff-- 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  25:59 
What, they put, like, stuff, on their legs? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  26:01 
Dye, yeah, dye. Made it look like they have stockings on. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  26:04 
Oh, wow. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  26:04 
And-- 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  26:04 
Wouldn't that come off on your dresses? 
 
Page 17 of 20 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  26:05 
Well, that was another worry, yeah, especially if it rained. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  26:06 
[Screams]. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  26:06 
So--there was just all these things. They were so awful. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  26:09 
But then those happened to your grand--to your mom, not you, right? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  26:21 
Yeah. No, not me, but I certainly heard about them. And then the Depression--the employer 
practices, the way employers ripped off women was just unreal, and men, too. Just rip off 
everybody they could. I've been hearing stories similar to it lately. It's quite interesting. And, 
well, Mother worked in the cannery in the San Joaquin Valley in the summers, cutting up 
peaches to put them in cans, you know? And they wouldn't let the women have bathroom breaks. 
And the women worked on these-- 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  26:44 
Well, what were they supposed to do-- 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  26:46 
Slats. Well, they were supposed to spread their legs and piss on the slat as they worked. And the 
union came in and got them bathroom breaks [laughs]. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  27:04 
[Groans].  
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  27:04 
It was a kind of shit, you know? And then the men always--you know, the male supervisors 
always feeling up the young women working every summer, I suppose. That was [inaudible]. My 
grandfather was wildly against that sort of thing. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  27:23 
That's cool. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  27:23 
There was one of the elders at church, chased around my sister, his first daughter, around the 
table in the basement once, and she told her family, and her father was up there doing the sermon 
on Sunday, and this guy came into the church and her father jumped down off the pulpit and beat 
him up [laughs]. So it's definite [inaudible]. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  27:38 
Did you ever get raped? 
Page 18 of 20 
 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  27:40 
No. I have never been raped, and I think it's luck, and it's also just like this total trusting of 
myself. I've thought a lot about this recently. It's--my mother taught me how to trust myself and 
my feelings about men somehow, and I can just feel if one isn't safe or not. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  28:00 
So you've never had any weird thing like that happen? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  28:04 
Oh, I had some weird things happen, but I never got caught, because I always knew it was weird 
early enough and trusted myself-- 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  28:13 
That you didn't go any further. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  28:14 
That I didn't go any further. Once I saw a play--a bunch of little playlets written by women on 
how they got raped, and at each point-- 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  28:23 
You could tell when you would have left. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  28:24 
Exactly. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  28:25 
Interesting. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  28:26 
Exactly. Uh-huh. And I've had a lot of adventures, and I haven't had a lot of adventures. I mean, 
there are a lot of things I haven't done. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  28:37 
But you were married a lot too, I wonder if that has to do with it. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  28:40 
You know, I've probably slept with 100 men, you know. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  28:45 
Really? Let's go into that. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  28:47 
[Laughs]. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  28:48 
Page 19 of 20 
 
Let's put those men [inaudible]--  
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  28:49 
I've had a lot of fun. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  28:50 
Wilt Chamberlain, watch out [laughs]. All right, let's hear it. Anyone like Geraldo? [Inaudible]. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  28:56 
Well, I had a lot of adventures. I hitchhiked along Los Angeles-- 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  29:01 
Really? And you didn't end up feeling dangerous doing that? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  29:05 
Well, I figured out how to do it, you know. Before I did it, I figured it out. That's one of the 
things--somehow my mind works that way. I figure how to do things before I do them. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  29:12 
What'd you figure out? 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  29:12 
Well, I figured out that I was not gonna hitchhike on the freeway. I was only gonna hitchhike on 
surface streets. And I figured out that I wouldn't get into a car that didn't have handles or that had 
those automatic doors that were controlled-- 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  29:13 
[Gasps] So smart. I was an idiot and got in one without handles through his door, you know, like, 
he goes, Oh, won't open in the rain. And I went, Oh, okay, I'll just go through your door. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  29:31 
And I never got into two--I never got into two-door cars if I was gonna sit in the backseat. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  29:38 
God, that's brilliant. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  29:39 
And then I decided, and if there was any problem, I would just get out at the first stoplight. And I 
did that a couple times. And then I decided that if they ever started going on the freeway, 
because, you know, we would figure this out beforehand where we're going, then I would jerk 
the wheel of the car and smash into another car. That never happened. So, you know, I just 
figured it out. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  30:02 
And you never had anyone like jump at you out of bushes or anything where you weren't in the--
I mean, in a situation where you aren't in the controlling position. 
Page 20 of 20 
 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  30:11 
I've never had anybody jump out any bushes. I've had people sort of try to jump out at me in cars 
and follow me in cars. And crossing the street and running and hiding is what I've done 
[inaudible]. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  30:22 
Running and hiding?  
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  30:22 
Yeah, because I walked all over Venice at night in my miniskirt, because I just wasn't going to 
be locked in a box. You know, there's all this stuff just before the women's movement started--
there was all this stuff about assaults on women and how we should not go out after sunlight and 
double-bar doors. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  30:40 
Oh, you were pre-Take Back the Night on an individual level. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  30:42 
Right. It just pissed me the hell off. I was not going to be locked in a box my whole life. So, I 
learned stuff--I mean, all the men I was ever involved wanted to teach me how to defend myself. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  31:00 
Really? So you learned self defense too. 
 
Miriamma Mae Carson  31:00 
Oh, yeah. They taught me what to do, breaking kneecaps and such. They were always into 
teaching me those sorts of things. I was always into learning that. I carried a switchblade in high 
school, [inaudible] in my purse, but nobody knew it. 
 
Kirsten Anderberg  31:03 
See, that's what I was going to ask--[tape cuts off]. 