—Kaye Carver Collins
The Farm Families were there early. My dad came from Athens to Rabun Gap in the thirties, primarily to work with the farm program. He did some teaching also. That was his main job, I think. He came first to organize the Farm Family Program and, besides doing that, he headed up the kids on the baseball team for a while, so wherever he was needed, that is what he did.
Dr. Ritchie would come down to our house, sometimes at six o’clock in the morning, because he thought of something he had to tell Daddy. He would come in and have a cup of coffee and talk to Daddy before he ever went to work, so I think my dad worked from six in the morning to seven or eight at night sometimes—really long hours! Daddy also did bookkeeping one time when they were short of a bookkeeper. There wasn’t much he couldn’t do. Dr. Ritchie would walk just like everybody else. He would walk from where they lived; they lived in a little house. It was not an awful big house at all. They were a fantastic couple! He would come walking down at six o’clock in the morning, just as hard as he could come.
Dr. Ritchie always had presents for all the Farm Families and a big tree at Christmas. It was held in the dining hall, usually, because that was a big place. They always had presents for all the little ones especially. I don’t really remember too much about it, but I am sure the presents weren’t anything expensive. The women met, I don’t know how often they met, but they had sort of a club, or a get-together, because I know Mother, Martha Eleanor Fry, always went to those. She enjoyed going. She enjoyed being a part of the Farm Family unit.
I remember the Farm Families who had children my age. I remember the Thurmonds and the Swansons were ones we were most fond of. They were special people. The Webbs lived not too far from the old house where I lived. I used to visit back and forth with Betty Webb. I remember our house was very cold [laughs]. You did not have furnace heat then. You had coal stoves and woodstoves. Our bedrooms were very, very cold. When we would get up of the morning, we would run to the room that was the warmest. It was cold in that old house, but it was a wonderful time! There were always a lot of children around us; one time my mother had a lot of the children playing out in the yard, and somebody came by and asked her if that was an orphanage. There were five of us, plus five or six more of the neighbors, so they thought for sure that it was an orphanage!
PLATE 100 “He taught the adults things like dairying and beef cattle programs, and just farming in general.” Frances’s father, Henry Lee Fry, at left. Photo courtesy of Rabun Gap–Nacoochee School Archives
We used to go camping over on Scruggs Rock. We would get together, a group of us, and go over there and cook breakfast, spend the night out there on the hard ground. I don’t know how we enjoyed it so much! We were probably ten or twelve years old. We liked to tease each other about that the graveyard on Scruggs Rock. We also went frog gigging. Have you ever heard of that? [Editor’s note: Frog gigging occurs at night. The participants use a lantern or flashlight to locate frogs along the banks of a river or pond. The light reflects in the frogs’ eyes and also stuns the frogs for a moment, making them easier to catch using a four- or five-tined stick. Once the frogs were captured, their hind legs were removed and cooked for eating.] We did that at Green Pond. Scruggs Rock was a big playground for us. It was within walking distance without getting run over; of course, we didn’t have a lot of traffic then anyway. In fact, we would ride bicycles. My grandparents lived in Clarkesville, Georgia, and we would ride bicycles all the way from here to Clarkesville [about thirty miles]. When we got tired, we would stop, and the conductor would let us put our bicycles on the train. So we rode part of the way on bicycles and part of the way on the train, the Total Failure [Tallulah Falls Railroad]; you know, that is what it was called! We had a lot of fun growing up because we all had a lot of children around us who were the same age, so we had a really good time growing up.
Going back to the Farm Families, they had certain criteria; there were certain things they had to have before they could come. I am sure they had to have a good, big family and real need. I am not sure exactly how they decided. I remember my mother—she was not a nurse, but Dr. Neville, who was the doctor for our community, if somebody was expecting a baby, especially if it was a Farm Family, he would come get Mother to go with him to help take care of the babies. I remember one time (this was not a Farm Family baby) the mother died. They didn’t have help and the rest of the family was small children, so Mother brought that baby home with her, and we kept it two or three months and cried when it left because we felt like it was family.
I remember mostly my years at Rabun Gap. We had wonderful teachers; Miss Lennon and Miss Clayton and all of them were really marvelous teachers. Miss Jones was the librarian. They knew how to teach you! I also attended the junior college there. We had a lot of good home economics teachers and had a really good home economics department at that time. They had a nice kitchen set up, and we learned how to cook. We had a lot of machines—we had sewing instruction. We got to make a dress. Every year we could choose something that we wanted to do, a project. I ended up making several dresses that way.
PLATE 101 “Of course, every reunion that we come back to, they are getting fewer and fewer at our age, but for years we had such a large crowd of ours that came back.”
The students used to pick blackberries and make blackberry pies and blackberry jam. They canned and had gardens. I didn’t do that up there at Rabun Gap–Nacoochee, but I did it in my own home. Everybody had more than one job!
Jimmy and I dated in high school. We had basketball games and plays, and we had a lot of stuff happening. We had a lot of different activities on campus. We stayed busy all the time. Most of the things were on campus. We did have a theater in Clayton we could go to, but if you were dating someone in the dormitory, they didn’t have a car. If you were dating somebody who had a car, you might get to Clayton to the theater. Of course, I went off to college after I got through school here; I went to finish my degree, then I got married.
My fondest memories are of meeting such a variety of people, and it seems like every one of them is special to you. Of course, every reunion that we come back to, they are getting fewer and fewer at our age, but for years we had such a large crowd of ours that came back. It is always such fun to get back together. I think it was the people that made it so special.
“Jack Acree … washed my mouth out with soap!”
~Jimmy Deal~
Jimmy Deal was a boarding student at RGNS in the late thirtiess and early forties. His father had passed away before he was two and his oldest brother died forty-five days later, leaving his mother to raise seven children alone. The boarding students were required to work just as hard as the Farm Families did in order to pay for their tuition. There were two dormitories when Jimmy first went to Rabun Gap, but later a third one was added to accommodate more male students. According to Jimmy, Mr. Shotts, the admissions director, had a bet with Dr. Ritchie that he could enroll one hundred boarding students that fall, and he did, winning a new hat from Dr. Ritchie.
—Kaye Carver Collins
They didn’t have room enough, so they built a new boys’ dorm down below where the gymnasium is now. We must have had twenty rooms there, I think. I guess we had four men to a room. It was called the annex. Each room had a woodstove. That was one of the good things we had going because in the wintertime when it snowed, Dr. Ritchie would close down the school, partly because the day students had trouble getting there, but the rest of us would go rabbit hunting. We would track rabbits in the snow. We tracked them, found them under a bush, and grabbed them! So what we would do if we caught a rabbit is dress it out and take it back to the room. We could cook on top of those little stoves. It was pretty good eating! I think we were very humane. We would take a stick and whop him right back of the head just as hard as we could. He didn’t know what hit him! We got along pretty well under the circumstances.
We were a pretty responsible bunch of youngsters. There was a joint chimney
between two rooms, so there were two stovepipes running up the same chimney. We didn’t have to go get wood, per se, but we did have to bring it there. We went up into the mountains and cut firewood because the dormitories and main building, Hodgsen Hall, were wood-fired in those days. We would cut pulpwood and stuff and haul it to the dormitories. Now, we didn’t use wood in my dormitory. We burned coal, so we got along very well. We had a small apartment that was occupied by two male teachers and, in some cases, a third one. They were like houseparents, but they also taught. Jack Acree was one of them. He later became Executive Secretary [Director] of the Georgia School Boards Association.
Miss Hackney taught history. Miss Lennon taught math. They taught Bible, too. Yes, that was a required course, both in the junior college and the high school. I have never been sorry about that either! It was very helpful. I remember one time Jack Acree, a former student who came back to teach in the junior college, washed my mouth out with soap! I was saying a few words I shouldn’t have! He just grabbed me because I was right outside his door, since my door and his were opposite each other. I don’t remember what I was saying, but it was something I shouldn’t have. He reached out and just grabbed me! You know, he was a pretty tough little guy. He had me well under control and before I knew it I had a mouth full of soap! It didn’t stop me from swearing, but it taught me not to under certain circumstances!
My principal work at Rabun Gap was in the dairy department. My first year at Rabun Gap–Nacoochee School was the summer of ’38, and I started out working in the garden department. I was a long way from home, so I never was able to go home and visit during the holidays. I grew up in eastern North Carolina, about one hundred miles from the coast. So I was there at Rabun Gap to work during the holidays. My first Christmas holiday, I started working in the dairy, and I milked cows for the next three years! The result was that I majored in dairy science at the University of Georgia, taught there, and spent fifty years in the dairy industry.
We didn’t have all this mowing equipment; the cows did that. We would take the dairy herd out and let them mow grass. We had to be at the barn at four o’clock in the morning. We had alarm clocks, but actually what we did, because most of the time all the guys who milked at the dairy were in the same dormitory, there was one person in the dormitory that was responsible for getting the others up. While we were working the dairy, another crew took care of the hogs and another crew took care of the beef cattle. All of those were at different times of the day. We also butchered the beef and hogs. We had lots of things going on.
PLATE 102 “I remember one time Jack Acree … washed my mouth out with soap!”
Whoever got there first had to get the cows in; each of us had our own assignment. One person would be assigned to go get them and bring them in, in three different groups. They had to be put in certain locations, and then when they went into the milking barn, we had it set up. It is amazing how fast cows learn their stall! If people were as smart as cows sometimes, it would be a lot simpler. We had twenty-four cows that four of us were milking. It was all hand done in those days. There were eight cows in a row, and each of us had two cows. The most memorable occasion I had was one time a fellow named Foster Goolsby, who was a junior college student, was sitting just the cow beyond me. (He later became a school superintendent.) He had on a brand-new pair of overalls, and his hind pocket was just sticking way out, and I was sitting right behind him. I just filled his hind pocket full of milk until it started getting good and wet and he started feeling it. (The devil made me do it!) When he jumped up, I jumped up; he chased me around the feed room! I just knew he was going to kill me! I had a bucket half full with milk, so when I went around the last corner, I knew he was right on top of me, and I just turned around and threw that whole bucket of milk right in his face! I have told his wife many times since then that the reason he is such a good-looking fellow is because I gave him a milk bath when he was a youngster!
We would milk in an hour and a half. From the time we would start to the time we got through, it was usually close to a couple of hours, but that involved getting the cows in, milking them, and then they got put in the location where they were supposed to be, or we turned them out to pasture. We didn’t usually turn them out except in the summertime. Of course, we had to be responsible for getting the hay in. We didn’t have hay bales in those days—that was forked! We did everything from plow and plant corn to harvest it as silage, filling two upright silos. We hauled the feed off to have it ground. We didn’t have a grinder. When we got it back, we mixed the cow feed by hand. You don’t think that is fun; you work in there, and you work it in a little at a time, throw your feed in there, and have to turn it over five or six or seven times. It was dusty, but we managed to get along very well. My job, usually, after we got done milking, was to clean up the milking equipment. That took a little time, too. Thank goodness we had a good water supply. During World War II all the men were in service and the girls ran the dairy.
Our water supply was from a real good spring up on the mountainside, and it came down into a monstrous big cistern that held all the water. Gravity from there down, enough pressure so that even though that cistern was, of course, at a higher elevation than the main building, we had adequate pressure. We would get the water just by natural gravity. It was already electrified when we got there. The electrical system was over at Estatoah Falls.
The chicken houses were started while we were there. We had small chicken houses, but they put in a big chicken house. One of my former roommates worked at the chicken house. Do you girls want to leave while I tell her this?! Anyhow, he was chewing gum, and he dropped his gum, and he said he tried three or four pieces before he found the right one [laughs]. That is a true story. I wasn’t involved in it; it is just hearsay.
Dr. Ritchie never learned to drive. He either had a student driver, or Mrs. Ritchie drove him everywhere he went. His home has been torn down. It was right across the street from where the industrial arts building is now. There was a one-story cottage there that the Ritchies used to live in.
Dr. Ritchie did not want us to have tractors because he wanted the kids to have the jobs. The only people who had tractors were some of the Farm Families. Occasionally, they would do some work for the school when they got caught up on their own work. We had four pairs of mules, plus a spare, so we did everything with mules. I still remember the names of all of them! It was fun. We weren’t supposed to work them but six days a week, but on Sundays sometimes we would slip out some of them and go riding around the country. We went over on the road by the quarry and I was riding a big, tall, raw-boned mare mule named Kit. She was about sixteen and one half hands—big and tall. Peter Williams was riding another mule, and he came along behind me. He had a piece of hose about five feet long in his hand. When he came by me, he hit my mule in the rump and she made a surge, like that! I bounced all the way from her rear end to her shoulders and ended up hanging underneath her! My arms were locked around her neck before I ever got her stopped. We all rode bareback. That is the closest I ever came, I guess, to getting absolutely killed! If I had fallen under that mule, there would have been no way to keep me from getting stomped. We also had a couple of bulls, and we were responsible for making sure the cows got bred naturally; we weren’t doing artificial breeding in those days. We had two big bulls, and, I mean, they were big! We learned to be very cautious.
We didn’t have any sports besides baseball and basketball. They did play baseball—in the cow pasture! I remember one time a fellow slid into what he thought was third base! They had a gym, but it has been completely remodeled now. There is a great story they told on the athletic director; his main activity would have been as athletic coach, basketball partly. Somebody asked him how he had managed to get such a good center for the basketball team. “It was very simple,” he said. “I sent him out across the pasture where the big bull was, the big bull got after him, and there was one tree in the field. He made a beeline for that tree, and there was one limb
twelve feet off the ground, and he jumped!” They said, “Did he get it?” He said, “Not going up, but he got it coming down!” So that is how he became the center for the basketball team.
PLATE 103 “We had small chicken houses, but they put in a big chicken house.”
We had a canning house where all the girls did all the cooking. The old dining hall was where the industrial arts building is now. It was a two-story building, and the girls who worked in the kitchen lived upstairs. One of the good features about working in the dairy was that on Sundays we had to carry the milk down to the dining hall after we got it cooled. We had a surface cooler that the milk flowed over, so we would take it down to the dining hall. On Sundays when we got down there, there were always some Sunday desserts left over. The girls who worked in the dining hall were very kind to us. They made a point to be sure that we got plenty of special food when we got down there with milk on Sunday afternoons. Let’s see, I can’t think of the dietitian’s name right now. Anyway, they were pretty good to us! The crew that had to work on Sunday fared pretty well!
Frances and I were high school sweethearts! She lived on campus, so I had to go down to her place. We didn’t marry until after she got her degree. I was planning on her putting me through college, and she did help [laughs]. Her final degree was a PHT—Pushing Hubby Through!
We graduated from high school in 1940, and Frances graduated from the junior college in 1942. I attended junior college at Rabun Gap for my freshman year, but the year after I finished high school, I couldn’t go to school anymore because I didn’t have any money. So I joined the CCCs [Civilian Conservation Corps] for a year and then went back for my freshman year. For my three years there, nobody in my family put a nickel into my education. We didn’t have any money. The only way I could go there was just simply the fact that we were able to work on campus and earn ten cents an hour.
The Foxfire 45th Anniversary Book Page 43