In the early part of 1972, which was the last part of my term, we had a prisoner that we caught in South Carolina. He stole some gas in Franklin, North Carolina. We got a call on him, and we caught him coming down Highway 441. We brought him on to jail, and he was tried for stealing gas. In the meantime, we checked his records out. It turned out that he was an escapee from a federal penitentiary in Florida. So they had the jurisdiction on him, but we tried him in Georgia for possessing stolen property. I believe they gave him three years, to the best of my knowledge.
I was holding a young boy from New York in jail the same time I was holding this man from the penitentiary in Florida. We were holding this young boy for Towns County. I forget what they were holding him for, but the main thing Towns County Police Department wanted to do is have him witness in a case to convict a real bad criminal. Well, this one day I came in late from work, and the deputy told me that this little boy from New York had sent a note out, and the note said he wanted to talk to us. We made out like he had a phone call or something, and I went back there and got him. This young boy was telling us about the guy we had from the penitentiary in Florida that planned to escape. Anyway, he said that he talked one of those boys into bringing a pistol in that night when they came back from church. I moved this feller from Florida out by himself in the back of the jail where we had two cells. The county had fixed a place in the back for storage space—mattresses, blankets, and things like that. In the meantime, we took everything away from him, except his matches and cigarettes and the normal things for anybody to have. So I went on to bed. We were all very tired.
That feller had planned an escape to happen during the night. He had rolled a lot of toilet tissue together, and he put a match in the middle of it. He throwed it through the jail cell into that storage part. He waited until real early in the morning to where there would not be any fire officers out on the road. He knew that a fire at this time of the morning would result in us having to open up the jail. He would have an opportunity to escape. Well, this plan did not work out for him. A quarter until seven, my wife woke up and found the jail full of smoke. I got three prisoners out, but there were two men in the back who suffocated to death. I went in the bullpen first and got all the young people out first. I stumbled over one who had passed out on the floor. I got him out, and he lived.
Fred Lee, the man who opened up the courthouse that morning, came in through the back of the jail. He came in through the back of the jail. He came in at six thirty. He did not smell any smoke when he came up by that door. He got upstairs, going about his duty, and he heard people hollering and going on. He thought it was a normal situation, due to the fact that we had every kind of criminal in that jail. It was real bad. That was an awful bad tragedy. My wife was overcome by exhaustion. She was in the hospital for almost a week.
I had got my third deputy a week before this happened, and I had one deputy that was still in school due to mandatory training. I left the new deputy on duty to do what had to be done. Well, it turned out that we had arrested two men from Clayton. My new deputy put them in the front cells, whereas if I’d been there, I would have put them in the back. This was fortunate for the two men because it made them easy to get out without dying from the fire.
This county grew too fast [when I was in office.] It grew fast, day and night. This county has always grown very fast. These mountains here are wonderful, and naturally everyone likes to live here. We’ve got all these woods and all these lakes and houses. A lot of people would not dream about the scenery that we have here.
Back then, we did not have any Mountain Patrol, no policemen at Tallulah Falls, none at Mountain City or Dillard. It was just work day and night for us back then. The police department did not have adequate help. I did not have a secretary, bookkeeper, radio operator, or anything. My wife, my deputies, and my prisoners helped me run the sheriff’s department. I could not have made it if it was not for my wife. She was the backbone of the sheriff’s department. She worked hard. I do not see how she made it. Come to think about it, we would not have made it if it was not for the prisoners helping around. You know, some of them you could depend on real good. They were a lot of help to me.
When I first went through office, you could basically do what you needed to do. However, I did not mistreat anybody. If I knew that someone stole something, and I knew it in my own heart and mind that I was right, I could get a warrant and would not worry about it. I could then go and pick them up and bring them into jail. I could question them then. At first, you know, they would not want to talk to you about it. If you kept on and on, you could break them down. I broke down a good nine out of every ten people that I questioned.
Things started to change. You could see people throwing things and breaking out glasses in store windows on the television. Illegal seizure and illegal search charges began to be filed. If you were to see a vehicle come out of a drive, loaded down with televisions, and if you did not have something like a taillight busted out, or a license check, or something like that, you could not stop them. If you did, it would be an illegal search and seizure, and the case would be thrown out. It just got harder and harder and harder to do anything. That trend is turning a little bit, but the crime rate is not.
I came to the realization that it had got to the point that it was not worth it. I made plans to quit two years ahead of the end of my term. So I had a job ready for the end of my term, making more money. My new job was only eight hours a day! I have to say that with no regrets. The people in this county were really good to me.
“Machine Gun Bandits Hold Up Bank Of Clayton”
~1934 bank robbery as recalled by Huell Bramlett~
My grandfather Huell Bramlett was born on May 21, 1914, in Clayton, Georgia. That is also where he grew up. He has lived in many different places and has done many interesting things, and he can tell you stories to prove it. He worked in Albany, Georgia, where he ran a record store and fixed broken jukeboxes. Granddaddy Huell was also in World War II in Okinawa when the war ended. From there, the American government sent him to help rebuild Korea. However, one of his most interesting stories was when, as a high schooler, he witnessed the robbery of the Bank of Clayton.
Kelly Cook and I told Mike Cook, our Foxfire teacher, about this story, and he was ready to send us to interview Granddaddy Huell on the spot. Mike got really excited because there had never been an interview about this bank robbery since students interviewed Luther Rickman, the sheriff of Rabun County at the time of the bank robbery in 1967, for the first issue of Foxfire. There has never been an account of this robbery printed in Foxfire from a bystander’s point of view.
—Erin Smith
The Rickman interview was Foxfire’s very first. It was printed in The Foxfire Magazine, volume 1, number 1, and reprinted in the Spring 1988 20th Anniversary issue. Here are a few facts that Huell left out: The amount of money that was taken was about $1,830. The robber’s name was Zade Sprinkle. There were some others, but Zade was the leader of the pack. The exact date was August 21, 1934.
—Kelly Cook
This robbery took place in 1934, to the best of my knowledge and abilities to tell it. I was going to school in the tenth grade in Clayton at Rabun County High School. My principal and teacher, Mr. Reynolds, he had a’ asthma attack, and he wanted me to drive him up to the drugstore. The drugstore was by the bank at that time. I drove his car up there with him, and he got out and went in the drugstore. While he was in there, I heard shooting in the bank. I didn’t know what was going on. I found out later that it was Dr. Dover that was in there when it was happening. He was a prominent doctor there at that time and an official of the bank, but, anyway, the gunshots were shooting at the floor, and we still did not know what was going on.
The officers of Rabun County were not around at that time. So Mr. Reynolds came out with his medicine that he got in the drugstore, and he got in the car. I started to back out. This other man that was with the robber was sitting in the car next to ours,
and he pointed his pistol over at us and said, “Pull back up in there and don’t move.” I still did not know what was going on and I was scared, too, I guess. At that time the robber came out with the money in the bag. I do not know whether it was a paper bag, a sack, or what. He got in the car, and the robber began driving.
PLATE 35 Clayton in the late 1930s or early 1940s. The bank is located where Western Union is. Photo courtesy of Edwards Studio
They took off down 441 South to the Bogg’s Mountain Road, but when they [the robbers] took off, I was sitting in Mr. Reynolds’s car. I could see some kind of machine gun in the back of the car. I did not know exactly what it was, but the evidence [later presented in court] said it was a machine gun. Anyway, they strewed roofing tacks in the road so the people that were chasing them could pick up the tacks and puncture their tires, and that would delay their capture.
Naturally, the Rabun County law, Sheriff Rickman and Harley McCall, had time to get there, and they were chasing the robbers. Anyway, they went across Bogg’s Mountain Road, and the county crew workmen that worked on the road were there scraping the road, and something happened, and they could not get their equipment out right then. Those two robbers told the workmen to move immediately. So they did; they moved it, and they went on and proceeded into South Carolina.
In North Carolina the police officers were alerted. At that time, there weren’t any radios, I don’t think, or any kind of equipment that they could get ahold of any of the other officers and let them know what was going on. So they were apprehended in Asheville, North Carolina. So this one robber—I don’t know what happened to the other one that was with him—they put him in jail at Asheville.
Then they appointed me to go and verify him after they had found out that I had seen the robber who came out of the bank with the money, to see if it was him. So this man didn’t have any hair, and he was a fat, chunky fella. And I had to verify him. When I verified him, Sheriff Rickman and Harley McCall got him to come on out, and Sheriff Rickman called this man’s name and said, “Get in the backseat with me. I’m not gonna put no handcuffs on you. If you do anything or try to run, I’ll shoot you.” So he came on to Clayton Jail, and finally he had a trial. When he had the trial, he told Sheriff Rickman, he said, “Sheriff Rickman, I’m glad you wasn’t in there ’cause I was in there after that money and me or you, one would have died.” That’s all.
PLATE 36 The original newspaper clipping from August 23, 1934, two days after the robbery
“I ain’t made no liquor in a long time.”
~Bass Dockery, “the Wild Russian”~
When we set out for Tennessee to interview Mr. Bass Dockery, we did not know what to expect. Mr. Hoyt Bryson of Mount Morris, New York, had written Foxfire telling us a little about Bass, suggesting that he would be a good contact. Mr. Bryson told us he grew up in the Tellico Plains area of Tennessee and had known about Bass for many years. “Mr. Dockery is a remarkable man,” he said, “and has always been very much a part of the mountains. He lost his right arm in a shoot-out with a law officer many years ago. He had many years of making whiskey … and homesteaded the place where he lives yet.”
When we finally found Bass Dockery’s house, two hundred miles and a four-hour drive from Rabun County, Georgia, there was no one at home. Disappointed, we decided to go back down the mountain and eat our lunch, hoping that he would return home before we had to head back to Georgia. A few hours later, we retraced our way up the narrow, bumpy, one-lane road and forded the creek where the bridge was out. We knocked on his door once more, feeling hopeful because a Jeep was parked in the driveway and it hadn’t been there before.
When we first arrived at Bass’s house, I didn’t see anything unusual about its construction. It was about sixty feet long and fourteen to sixteen feet wide, built of concrete block, and one story. Although I took the side of the house we drove up to as the front, there were no windows except for those in the shop at the end of the house. The front door, where we knocked, was the only visible entrance. Later, when I was on the inside and could see what the other long outside wall looked like, I knew why he needed no windows on one side; the outside wall was made of windows and led to a deck or porch about six feet wide, overlooking the valley we had just driven up from. There was something even more unusual: plate-glass windows between each room. By standing in the living room, you could look through the bedrooms and on into the kitchen, three or four rooms away. I think there were doors between the rooms, but I don’t remember. Perhaps they were just standing open. Bass said he didn’t want anybody sneaking up on him, and this way he’d be sure to see them first.
He answered our knock after what seemed like a very long time. We were contemplating leaving because we were hesitant about walking around to see if he was in the backyard, for fear he would think we were prowling. We didn’t want to leave, though, when we were so close to what we felt would be a great interview. Finally, he opened the door, and we began explaining our reason for being there. His grandson J. D. (short for John Dillinger) Dockery was also there and helped explain to his grandfather about us. We told Bass who we were and showed him some Foxfire magazines and books to assure him we meant no harm. He did talk to us some but did not want us to tape-record him or take pictures. He seemed somewhat apprehensive about being interviewed, though he showed us several newspaper articles that had been done on him over the past few years. We assured him that we would not publish anything until he had approved it. He said that we should wait a few weeks and then write him for a date, and he would have J.D. write and tell us when it would be convenient to return. We left a bit disappointed but excited about getting to come back later. I did write Bass a letter about two weeks later and waited anxiously. J.D. answered and gave us a date, and off we went again. On this trip, we were able to tape and photograph him.
Bass Dockery was born near Unaka, North Carolina, in 1894 and was one of four boys. His father was a farmer and a logger. When Bass was eighteen years old, he left home to work in logging camps. He worked for different logging companies and sporadically made moonshine until he was twenty-six. At that time, he married and started making moonshine for a living. He and his wife had nine girls and three boys, all we were told, named after outlaws he admired. The children have long since grown up and moved away, visiting occasionally, but usually Bass goes to see them now. Bass’s wife died in 1971, and until very recently, he rarely left the mountains. Now he owns a beautiful late-model car and spends the winters traveling out west and anywhere else he takes a notion to go. He showed us souvenir longhorn steer horns from Mexico and other mementos from his travels.
Bass claims that he was, and still is, the meanest man around. He has many experiences to substantiate that statement, but to me he seemed very pleasant and interesting. His personality is warm and friendly, his sense of humor sharp and witty. He had me captivated from the moment we entered his house. Tale after tale, true stories of his life came from this thinning, white-haired man. He told of shooting at the feet of neighboring young men when they were all courting and being thrown in jail for disturbing public worship. I just found it all hard to believe, but many people around Tellico will reassure anyone who asks that Bass did do those things, AND that he has honesty and integrity in spite of those shenanigans.
—Bridget McCurry
I was born over the mountains here. We lived up back in Unaka, North Carolina. We had a nice home, good as anybody else’s. We raised hogs and cattle, stuff like that. My father was a farmer that could do almost anything. No, he didn’t make liquor, and he’d get after me for makin’ it. I had three brothers. One brother lives in Franklin, North Carolina, now, and the other two are dead. Goldie, the brother next to me, made moonshine, but Raleigh never did make no liquor. He was kind of a meetinghouse [church] man. My grandmother on my daddy’s side died at my house. Now, she was a thoroughbred Cherokee Indian. Old Kiwooti was her daddy and lived on Hanging Dog back up in the mountains. They just had split-wood puncheons and moss
for a bed. The dog and the cats crawled through every crack in that house. There wasn’t a crack stopped up! She was staying with me and my family when she died.
I never went to school but a few days in my life. When I was growin’ up, there wasn’t no compulsory going to school. I didn’t have to go. And we lived up back in Unaka, three or four miles back up in the mountains. I didn’t want to go—boy-like, you know—and that’s what happened. I got no education for nothing but meanness. I stayed at home till I was eighteen years and then went to work in logging camps. My father logged before me. At one time, logging was a big industry here. I’ve worked at Sunburst, Black Mountain, and Mount Mitchell in North Carolina, went over the mountain with the Brown Brothers down there and worked for Bancroft’s down here. I worked at Helen, Georgia, and in Conasauga, Tennessee.
I’ve been in lots of logging camps, spent seven or eight years just in logging camps. It was a hard life. Made two dollars a day. It would be from seventy-five to one hundred seventy-five men to the camp. I’d change off jobs every once in a while. That’s the way they do it now. They’ll hear of a better job and a better place, and they’ll travel backwards and forwards, changing jobs. That’s the way it worked. I’ve stayed as high as six months in one camp—eat every meal and sleep there every night. I quit logging when I was twenty-six. That’s when I got married and went to makin’ liquor full-time. My wife was twenty years old when we got married. She died in 1971, had cancer for six years. I’ve lived alone ever since she died.
If people had to live now like I was raised up, they’d shoot theirselves. They couldn’t put up with it. They’ve been living this high life, and if they had to go back to livin’ the way it used to be, they’d shoot theirselves. My wife and I lived way down here on what they called Beaver Dam Bald till the kids got old enough to go to school. Then we moved up here, and I went back to mixing that liquor.
The Foxfire 45th Anniversary Book Page 19