The Foxfire 45th Anniversary Book

by Inc. The Foxfire Fund

  I only had two sisters, no brothers, and they are both dead now. One of my sisters’ husband went into the Army and retired there. I didn’t stay but five years and seven months in the Army ’cause really I couldn’t stand goin’ overseas in that boat. Liked to have killed me, boys. We went over on a ship, and I got so seasick that I liked to have died on that thing. I offered to pay my way back here whenever I came back from Germany, and they wouldn’t let me. They made me ride the ship for eleven days. When I got off that ship in New York, I said, “Mister, if they get me back on one, they’ll have to kill me ’cause I’m not goin’ back on one.” They said, “No, you gotta go with us and stay with the troops.”

  I said, “Well, when you get me back to South Carolina and I get my discharge, you can kiss this Army boy good-bye ’cause I ain’t comin’ back.” That’s why I didn’t go back and retire in there. I’d go AWOL right now before I’d ride one of them ships again. I sure would ’cause it just kills me. I can hear that thing screakin’ now, and it felt like it was just gonna break half into with me twelve or fifteen miles out from shore. I knew I couldn’t swim it [laughs]. Up in Alaska it’s rough up there in that ocean, and over in Germany, too. They ain’t no way nobody can get another ship out there in case something happens either.

  I tried to get in the Navy, but I couldn’t ’cause I was color-blind. I did everything ’cause I wanted to be a sailor and after I went down there to Anderson, South Carolina, to try to get in, they sent me a letter sayin’ I could get in the Army, but couldn’t get in the Navy. So I went ahead and joined the Army in 1948 and went down to Fort Jackson for thirteen weeks and come home for eleven days on vacation. Before I went to Japan, they sent me a letter sayin’ if I’d come to Greenville, South Carolina, they’d take me in the Navy, and I’m sure glad that I didn’t get to go. I stayed in George Patton’s Third Army Division for sixteen months in Fort Knox, Kentucky. I marched a many a day up and down the streets there for big generals like General Martin Clark. We’d get twenty-four breaks goin’ up through there in the hot summertime. You see them guys falling out just like flies. Eighty-five or ninety degrees, and you got twenty-five to thirty men lined up marchin’ through yunder [yonder] for two, three, or four miles and you just give out. You have to stay in step, or someone will reach in and pull you out. The ol’ Army used to be tough, but I sure did love it.

  We was fixing to go overseas, and I got in a fight with a guy from Arkansas and broke my fist, and they put me in the hospital for ’bout three weeks. Instead of sending me to Japan, they sent me to Alaska for nineteen months, then I come back here and stayed in Fort Knox for ’bout fifteen months. Then I went to Germany and stayed over there for twenty-three months. I drove all over Germany, England, and France. When I went to Germany in 1951, they sent us to [one of] Hitler’s youth schools. He used to take all your kids up to that mountain place. He had big barracks built down in the mountains and then big ol’ shars [showers] in there and horses for ’em to ride, ever since they was little kids. After we won the war, they sent us back there, so that’s why I went all over Germany driving big wheels around. I had a good recommendation for driving, and that’s why I drove for Eisenhower. He was a five-star general then, and I drove for him when I was in the service in Germany, on two different occasions. In 1951, Thanksgiving and Christmas, I stayed in the field with him all day—just drove for him all day. That ended up being President Eisenhower. He left me over there and come back over here to run for president, then he extended my time over there for eleven more months. I left there in February or March of ’53. I come back here, got married, went to Louisville, Kentucky, and got them boys that I was in the service with to get me a job. One of them was working at the Pepsi-Cola place, and he had a buddy that worked at BFGoodrich. That guy told me that if I’d come up there and do good work that they’d give me a job. I’d have to work for ninety days before I could get in the union, but I had good recommendations. Eisenhower wrote me a recommendation, and they hired me at BFGoodrich. I was the only man that had ever worked there that didn’t have a high school education. So I worked the ninety days, and they set me up to first-class pay. Top money back then was when I made $16.10 an hour, in 1989.

  My wife went with me to Kentucky. That’s where Dwight was born at. We stayed up there till my daddy died. Before my daddy died I lived down here on Lake Tamykee. I went and bought my mama and daddy a home here on Lake Tamykee. After my daddy died my mama wanted to stay down there by herself. I brought my two boys down to live with her, so she wouldn’t be by herself. First thing ya know my wife wanted to come back down here to Walhalla, South Carolina, because her people was here, so I sold my house up on Lake Tamykee and come back down here, and bought this place. I bought my mama a trailer and put it right here next to me; then, after she died, Joan’s mama lived up there in Franklin, North Carolina, and the man she was goin’ with [dating] died, so she wanted to come down here. So we let her move in this trailer here. She lived there till she died ’bout two or three years ago. Life’s been rough, but you gotta keep on goin’.

  I quit smokin’ in 1981. Me and Dwight and another boy from Salem went huntin’, and I’d usually carry a pack ’n’ a half of cigarettes and went in the woods and climbed a tree ’bout twenty-five-foot high and the wind was just a-blowin’. I reached to get me a cigarette and didn’t have but one. I thought, “Lord have mercy, I done messed ’round and come up here with no cigarettes.” Then I got to thinkin’, “I’m just gonna quit.” I went down there and told Dwight, I said, “Dwight, I’m gonna eat this sandwich, smoke this last cigarette, and that’s it. I ain’t smokin’ no more.” And that’s what I done. I got me some of ’em butterscotch candies, and I kept puttin’ ’em in my pocket; even when I worked at Duke Power, and the guys would take a smoke break, I’d put me in a piece of that candy and keep that in my mouth.

  Joan: They bet each other a steak dinner if they didn’t all quit. If they stayed quit, then they didn’t have to buy, but the ones that started back had to buy the others a steak dinner. He’s the only one that stayed quit.

  Carlee: I used to work with J. R. Lamb, a founding member of The Singing Christians, at Duke Power. He was on my crew. My boss, Charles, told me, said, “Carlee, you take J.R. You and him build that wall back yonder.”

  J.R. said, “Okay, I’ll work with ye.” And we got back there to that wall, me on one side and him on the other side, and I’s over there beatin’ on a log and cussin’ a little bit. J.R. would say, “Carlee?” I’d say, “What?” He’d say, “Boy, I’m right over here across this wall from you and you cussin’ like that ain’t helpin’ us build this wall any faster. You quit that cussin’ and you and me will build this wall, but that cussin’ ain’t gonna help us none at all.” So I quit cussin’ [laughs].

  He’d tell me some days that he was old and ’bout outta horsepower, and I’d say, “J.R., you just tell me what to do, stand back outta my way, and I’ll do your work for ya.” He’d say, “Boy, I sure do thank ye.” We worked in them nuclear power plants for a long time, boys. I like them nuclear power plants, if they’ll just keep the maintenance up on ’em. Let me tell ye somethin’. Lot of people don’t realize it, but some of ’em pipes over there that the steam goes through and goin’ ’round ’em curves like a stovepipe, first thing ye know four to six years from now that pipe’s gonna get thin. When that steam goes out, you oughta see some of ’em things blow up. It’ll blow four to five hundred foot in the air. Just blows everythin’ and the buildin’s all gone. Keep maintenance up on ’em, and they’d be fine. If they mess ’round and go to sleep and forget ’bout somethin’, then somebody’s gonna get killed, but they ain’t no way them plants over there that we built is gonna blow up. You oughta see the concrete and stuff that we put in them things one hundred and fifty or two hundred foot down yonder in the ground and solid concrete; there’s just no way. I worked building the plant and worked in it after it was in operation, too.

  I have been racin’ ever since 1950.
Racin’ over there in Germany was on the highway and not on a track. Eddy drove my race car ever since he was ’bout thirteen or fourteen years old. We have raced everywhere. Raced in North Carolina, in Georgia, all over South Carolina, and just all around. They called him “Fast Eddy.” After he left, got killed, Lee got to be ’bout eleven or twelve years old, and he started driving my car. Lee’s Eddy’s son, my grandson, and he drives for me now. He lives up in Long Creek, South Carolina. I drove my cars, too, back in my younger days. I liked to have got killed in 1962 in Orangeburg, Kentucky. Took me about three or four months till I could walk again. When I got to where I was walkin’ again, I quit racin’ ’em round tracks and started drag racin’. I had a fast car then. I won all of these trophies [points to the shelves]. We ain’t got ’em all in the house no more, but that trailer down there is full of trophies that I won all over Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, and Ohio. I’m in the Georgia hall of fame for racin’. I race Chevrolets. I run that car right up yonder [points to a picture], and we won many a races with that thang. Buck Simmons, he’s the winningest race-car driver they’s ever been in Georgia. On my mama’s one hundredth birthday, Buck had just won his one thousandth race, and he come and took a picture with my mama. My mama was one hundred, two months, and two days old when she passed away. She rode in that truck every race we ever went to, though.

  PLATE 21 Carlee’s race car

  Joan: He drives fast, not only on the racetrack, but he drives fast on the highway. We was goin’ down Highway 11; we was headed to the racetrack, and he was goin’ eighty-five miles an hour in a fifty-five-mile zone and the highway patrol stopped him. My son was about ten years old, and he was sittin’ in the back of the truck. The law was not to have a child in the back of the truck, but he was sittin’ in a little chair back there. Well, he gets his license and shows it to the trooper, and they go back to the back and talk. He’s talkin’ about huntin’ and racin’ and all the cop does is write him a warning ticket and says, “Mr. Heaton, you save the speed for the racetrack.”

  Carlee: He knew I was broke [laughs]. If you make any money racin’, then you always stick it back in somethin’.

  Joan: Um-hum. Like them ten-thousand-dollar motors you gotta have.

  Carlee: Things have changed since I was growing up. People are a lot different. People will lie to ya now. Back whenever I was a kid, you couldn’t find nobody that’d tell you a lie hardly. If they told ya something, they meant it, but nowadays you gotta sorta have one of ’em separators to separate the bull from the cow. I would change a lot of things if I could go back and live my life over. I’d start goin’ to church and listen to what my mama said whenever I was a kid ’cause we used to walk four or five miles every night to Brush Arbor, and my daddy would be somewhere drunk. Me and my mama and my two sisters would go to church every time we got a chance. Things have changed a lot for me the past few years ’cause used to be you couldn’t get me to go to church. My wife kept baggin’ [begging] me to go and baggin’ me to go. She was tellin’ me how much the Lord liked me and how good He’d been to me, so finally I decided to listen to her a little bit and I started goin’. I met Delbert McCall, pastor of Ole Country Church; he had preached my mama’s funeral and my boy’s funeral and I liked him, so I started quittin’ racin’ and goin’ to church. It was real hard to do, but I done it. I been that kinda guy that whatever I want to do I can do. I may not can do it as good as you can, but I won’t give up. I just don’t give up. I’d tell young people today to get in church every chance you get and praise God ’cause He sure loves us all, or He wouldn’t have done what He done. I just wish I’d done it a long time ago instead of wastin’ all that time, but the good Lord liked me, or He’d took me out of here a long time ago.

  “Most of the toys I had was homemade.”

  ~Coyl Justice shares childhood memories~

  Coyl Justice and Mildred, his wife of many years, live in a modest home in the Betty’s Creek community of Dillard, Georgia. Sharing space with their home is the nursery they began many years ago, along with a lush vegetable garden. On a warm July morning, I visited with them to discuss Mr. Justice’s secrets for planting native azaleas from seed [see the article on this page in the how-to section of this book], as well as his life as a son of the mountain communities that we here at Foxfire call home.

  Walking their property during our interview, I saw the results of many years of hard work. Greenhouses were filled with many varieties of plants, and many more bushes and trees filled the grounds. In their vegetable garden—a work of art in and of itself—Mrs. Justice shared sweet red raspberries straight off the bush, and Mr. Justice showed me his method of keeping deer out of his garden, a small green shed housing a radio that broadcast mostly sermons from one of the local Christian radio stations. Explaining that the only other station the radio could intercept was a rock ’n’ roll station, Mr. Justice told me how he had initially believed his idea to be a failure because the music did little to deter the deer; however, when he discovered the Christian station, too, he also happened upon the curious realization that deer evidently don’t care for preaching!

  Before our morning was complete, Mr. and Mrs. Justice had generously selected two plants they thought would make good additions to my own yard, for which they wouldn’t hear any suggestion of payment. When our interview was over, they invited me in as a guest to share a midmorning snack with them, and sitting in their kitchen, we spoke of our faith and families. I saw the kindness with which they treated each other and the affection with which they spoke of their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

  Mr. Justice and his wife were witness to the tremendous changes that took place in the mountains over the course of the twentieth century. They have known both hardship and the comfort of having enough. They have accepted great joy and endured terrible tragedy. Yet they do not merely survive but thrive, devout in their faith and with joy.

  —Lacy Hunter Nix

  It would take a long time to tell you my childhood memories, but they are some good memories. I was born on Betty’s Creek in Smithbridge Township, in North Carolina. I have four sisters and three brothers, including me. There is seven of us in all. We had a good time. I had two boys that I played with almost all the time—they were O’Neal and R. L. Burrell. After I got grown, they moved out of the community. That was probably one of my favorite childhood memories, gettin’ to play with them. We stayed in the creek, in the woods, climbed trees, and all that—we did it all the time. Day after day, when we was not havin’ to go to school, we did that.

  PLATE 22 “I met Mildred going to square dances.” Coyl and Mildred Justice standing in front of one of their greenhouses

  My earliest memories were when the school was up in what they call the Last Chance Schoolhouse. That is up at the foot of the mountain, down on Mama Daisy Justice’s. I used to go over there a lot. I was too young to go to school, but I used to go over there, and they would let me recite poems. I do not know how I remembered that, but that’s one of my earliest memories. Slippin’ off from home and goin’ to where Dad had some mean steers—that was very dangerous—and I would slip off and get in the pasture with those steers. Sister Helen would come and get me. I do not know why I did not get hurt, but I never did. That was when I was real small.

  Some of the fondest memories was gettin’ to go to school at the Last Chance Schoolhouse, and then sittin’ around in the house listening to Dad and all the older guys tell big stories about huntin’, and all that stuff, and about World War I. That’s just about it, besides going to Franklin, North Carolina, with Dad and Mom. I didn’t get to go much, but I remember I was overjoyed with stuff like that. That is some of the times that I got to go with them, but most of the time when we were at home, we had to work. I was too young lots of times to work, but we had to hoe corn. That is not a very good memory, watchin’ Bob and all the rest of my family that was older than me at work. Dad would get Bob in the field to hoe corn, and he would slip off. He had a wooden-wh
eel wagon, and me and him would be on that wagon. Dad would have to get a hickory and head him back to the cornfield. When he got his back turned, Bob would be back on that wagon. That was kind of fun.

  Back when I was real little, Dad worked in the woods all the time. I remember him talkin’ about having to work a year to pay his taxes. We raised what little food we had. To buy coffee, chickens, and cows, sometimes we would have two or three hogs, and we would kill one and sell it to buy coffee and flour and all that stuff. Then the Work Projects Administration [sic] come along in the early thirties, so that’s how he supplied food and clothes for us. We didn’t have a lot, but we had shoes at least in the wintertime. When it got close to Christmas is when we got shoes.

  School was pretty good till the first few years. I was scared to death—scared of the teacher and everything else, but that was when I started in the first grade. School was pretty good. They had a school at Mulberry just above where Newman’s Chapel is now. That’s the first time that we went to school. I was in the first grade. Dad had took some kind of contract with the county to bus the children from Betty’s Creek to Mulberry to school. They was only two teachers, and I think it was first, second, third, and fourth grade in one room and fifth, sixth, and seventh in the other room. There was only two teachers, and they had a job! They just had their hands full because everybody wouldn’t mind the teacher very well. Dad had a little pickup, and he made what we call a camper shell now on the truck, but it was homemade and people laughed about it. They called it the chicken coop because that is about what it looked like. That is how we rode to school—in the back of it. It wasn’t too warm, but we were out of the wind and rain. That is how we got to Mulberry School.