In 1948, the school built us a new house that was sealed. It had electricity, a bathroom, and running water in it. In 1949, the school built us the new barn. I don’t know exactly what the process was, but Dad went in and talked to them about running a dairy, and it was just something that they worked out. The school farm had four other dairies on it, plus ours. So in October of 1952, Dad went into the dairy business. At that time, he had seven cows and twelve calves. When Dad went into the dairy, he started paying cash money on the land instead of paying a share of what he raised.
Up until they built the new barn, we had been milking the cows by hand. The first time we milked—Dad, Harold, and me—it took us two and a half hours to milk seven cows. We didn’t know what we was a-doing. In that new barn, we had electricity, so we had International Milkers that were run by a vacuum. That was all three of us. Well, we put the cows in there, and they had a feed trough in front of them where we put the feed for ’em while we was a-milkin’. Well, one of the milkers had a big ole pulserator that caused the vacuum to hit this way and then that way [William moves his hands in a crisscross motion]. Well, that pulserator was supposed to switch the vacuum from the front two teat cups to the back ones and, at the same time, squeeze the cows’ teats. One of those pulserators, in shipment from the factory, had gotten bent. It wouldn’t hit nary a lick, and that was our biggest problem. That day it took us two and a half hours to milk just seven heads.
When Dad started the dairy, whoever owned the cows had the right to sell the milk. So Dad was paying rent on the land, and now he also paid rent on the house, but he had the right to sell the milk to whomever he wanted. Dad sold to Sealtest Dairies in Asheville, North Carolina. We started off milking the milk in five-gallon pails. We had one extra pail. We would just swap the lid off this pail onto another one, and then we took the milk to the cooler room and poured it into a strainer that set on top of a ten-gallon can. When the can filled up, we set the strainer off on an empty can, put the lid on the full one, and put the one with the ten gallons of milk in it over into the cooler. The milkman come by every other day and took the full cans of milk and left the empty ones.
PLATE 112 Clarence Thurmond (left) and William Thurmond (right) on the Rickman Creek boundary land when they were in the Farm Family Program
I started helping Dad when I was old enough to carry a lantern. I would get up of a morning before daylight. We would light the lantern, and I would carry the lantern for Dad to see how to get to the barn. Once at the barn, we would feed the mules, slop the hogs, milk the cows, and take them to pasture, and take the mules to the creek and water ’em. That was the start of my day. We done those chores seven days a week. On Sunday, we mainly did the chores at the barn, but we didn’t do any fieldwork on Sundays. On Sundays, you got up, went to the barn, and got the chores done up. Then when you had done that and eat breakfast, you went to church and mainly you walked to get there.
When Dad went into the dairy business, he was going to pay me and Harold four dollars a month for working in the dairy barn, and he was going to pay Annette, my sister, four dollars a month to go to the barn and wash the milk cans up. Well, Harold—he took his four dollars a month in cash. I had been wanting a heifer calf, and so Dad sold me one for four dollars a month. It took me ten months to pay the heifer off. That was in 1952. When she calved, I started selling milk, paying for the feed. Mr. H. L. Fry had a registered Guernsey cow and a heifer calf. He wanted to sell ’em, and he wanted two hundred fifty dollars for ’em. This was in 1953. I had saved up enough money in a year and a half to buy ’em.
One thing that Dad always done for a lot of Farm Families was castrate the pigs or the yearlings. Whenever it came time, they would ask Dad about helping ’em. Dad would always ask, “Is the signs [of the Zodiac] right?” They would say, “Yeah.” I remember one time Mr. Keener lived over on the hill there where Jeff Chastain built his house. He came over there and said, “Clarence, I’ve got a little job over there I need you to do.” Dad said, “Mr. Keener, when are the signs right?” He said, “Tomorrow.” Dad said, “I’ll be over there about eight thirty or nine.” We went over there, and he had three pigs he wanted Dad to castrate. Dad, he worked on them.
Mr. Keener said, “I’ve got another little job up there, but I hate to ask you to do it.” Dad said, “Mr. Keener, what is it?” He wanted an ole billy goat worked on. Dad said, “I’ve never worked on those billy goats. It might die.” Mr. Keener said, “I don’t care if he does die. I’m tired of smelling him.” So Dad went ahead and worked on him and the ole bill lived.
I mentioned before about Mr. H. L. Fry; well, he was the farm manager there at the school. He would go around to each farmer and meet with him. The farmers’ wives had meetings, too. They were supposed to attend one day a week or once a month. Mrs. Knox was in charge of that. They was taught and showed how to can and clean house. Mr. Fry would say to the farmers, “You need to do this, or that and the other.” One thing he believed in was a-cuttin’ off the creek banks every year. If any of the farmers were on a boundary of land that had wet land, they ditched it with a shovel to dry the land out. They would go in there and ditch it out by hand, usually in the wintertime, and go to a wooded area and cut poles, six or eight inches in diameter, and they would roll two of ’em in that ditch length-wise. Then they would go to the woods and saw ’em down a pine and saw it up according to how wide their ditch was. They would block the pine out with a crosscut saw, and then they split that block up in slabs. They would haul or sled those slabs to the field and laid them down on top of those poles. That held the dirt up off of those poles; therefore, the poles would let the water run out of the fields into the branch or creek. It would let the field or the dirt dry out to where you would not mar up [get stuck] in wetland. Now I’ve got a scar on my leg where I was pulling a crosscut saw and that saw hit my leg. It just laid it open. It was no stitches then; you just had kerosene-oil bottles—poured [the wound] full of kerosene and went right ahead and worked. It just kept it from getting infected.
Always right before Thanksgiving, we would have a Farm Family supper there in the old gymnasium where the administration building is now. Well, back then the school had that old ’40 model Ford bus, and they would bring it around and pick up all the Farm Families and haul ’em in there. The Farm Families would fix up a box supper, take it in there, and everybody shared. Then they would have games. One game I remember of them having there was, they got four or five of the Farm Family men and set ’em down in a chair. They said that they knowed they was all good milkers because they had milk cows at home. But what they done, they had these here baby bottles filled up full of milk, and they wanted to see how fast those men could empty out those bottles of milk a-sucking on it. Well, Dad was one of ’em. He got that nipple of his bottle between his teeth and bit a hole in it [laughs] and won that game.
’Long in November, when the temperature of a morning would get down below freezing, you killed hogs. It would give you enough of that cold temperature at that time of year to where the meat would cure out and not spoil on y’uns. Well, say Dad killed hogs—Mama would fix up a mess of meat for all the neighbors. Then when they killed hogs, they fixed up a mess of meat and sent a mess back to you. Back then the school had a slaughtering house over there. The farmers could either have a barrel, heat water at home, pour it in the barrel, and scald the hogs in that barrel, or take them to the school slaughterhouse and kill ’em that way. Dad killed hogs there at home a year or so, then he took ’em to the school’s slaughterhouse, which was much easier and faster. Grandma Thurmond always cut up the fatback meat to be rendered out for the lard, but she took the skin off of the fatback and had the skinless cracklings. Nowadays, the skin is left on the cracklings and that makes ’em tough.
Well, we all got into our share of mischief while living there. For amusement we would fix us up a sliding board in the fall of the year. We would take the widest board we could find, and we’d take that board and take it out to the chopping
block, slope that one end off. Then if there was any beeswax around and we could get our hands on it, we would turn that board up and put that beeswax on it and wax it down good. Then we went to the woods, found us a hill, and trimmed us out a trail. We’d do this from one year to the next. Then the leaves would fall on that trail that we had trimmed out last year. We would get right back up there and lay that sliding board down, sit down on it, and slide down the hill. We would also fish. We used a pole off of the creek bank and used the red worms as bait. We used a string off of a fertilizer sack as a line to fish with. And one of the things that us boys always had was a slingshot. They stayed in our back pockets. Generally, we had rocks in both of our front pockets, and anything that got up in front of us that we wanted to shoot at, we shot; and generally, we’d hit it, too!
I went to school at the Community School over there in Dillard. Then in the eighth grade, I went to Rabun Gap–Nacoochee School, and, at that time, the eighth graders did not rotate from class to class. Miss Perdix was my eighth-grade teacher, and she taught us every subject just like we were in elementary school. Then in the ninth grade, we went from teacher to teacher. Mr. Billy Joe Stiles taught me in biology. I think he’s about eight or nine years older than what I am. He was going to Berry College before his seventeenth birthday and, before his twenty-first, he was teaching at Clayton High School [Rabun County High School]. Then he came back to Rabun Gap–Nacoochee. His family was in the Farm Family Program, too. Mr. Morris Brown and Billy Joe were two fine teachers! Let’s see, Mr. Philp was the principal then and, in the late forties, Mr. Bellingrath was the president.
The farm program wanted you to be thrifty with your money. Most of the Farm Families that lived there went on and bought land of their own when they left the Farm Family Program. Most of the families, a lot of them, borrowed money through the Federal Land Bank or through the Farmers Home Administration to buy their land. Mr. Fry would help ’em with that. I would say that the Farm Family Program gave Dad the ability and the knowledge, and I’ll say the financial backing to where he could buy his own property and have his own farm. I learned the knowledge of how to work or do chores on the farm. Later on I was in the Future Farmers of America program, and I am the only member from Rabun County who has ever received the American Farmer Degree. I was involved good enough in farming to where I made out the applications on it for two years and got it. You had to be established in farming to get it. Well, at the time, I had twelve head of registered Guernseys, plus I had paid for that Oliver Super 66 diesel tractor while I was in high school. I received the American Farmer Degree after I finished up high school. An FFA member can stay active in FFA for three years after he has finished up high school. I applied for two years, and on the second one, I received the degree, and I am still the only FFA member from Rabun County that has been awarded the degree.
“Life was hard, but there were fun times also.”
~Harold Thurmond~
Harold Thurmond is William’s brother. He was four when Clarence and Ann Thurmond moved their family to the school farm. He remembers the first house they lived in as being “old and rough.” It had no underpinning, the wall studs were showing inside, and there was no electricity. In addition, their bathroom was a one-holer with a catalog for paper. Baths were taken in a galvanized tub with water drawn from the well and heated on a wood-burning cookstove. He also remembers his dad and mom saving up to fulfill their dream of owning their own farm.
—Kaye Carver Collins
Life was hard [on the school farm], but there were fun times also. One day Dad came in with an old bicycle in the mule wagon. It had no fenders, a loose chain, and bad brakes. My brother William claimed it and, being unable to ride, promptly plowed into a sticky-hedge bush. He wouldn’t give up or let me try it. Two hours and many scrapes, scratches, and bruises later, he made a circuit of the house, and I finally got my chance. I didn’t achieve success as quickly as he did. Rickman Creek ran through our farm. It served as a playground, a swimming hole, and a summer bathtub. Once when Dad was planting corn, I saw a large trout in the creek. I told Dad about it. He cut an alder pole, made a hook from a fertilizer tag staple, and tied the hook to the pole with a length of string from a fertilizer bag. I baited the hook with a grasshopper and caught that trout. Mama fried it for my supper. Some things that happened were downright funny—two had to do with our mules.
My favorite: Ol’ Alec was a slacker, smart, and stubborn, but then Ol’ Alec was a mule. His mate, Bob, caught all the heavy loads. Whether they were hitched to wagon or hay rake, Alec would gradually ease up on his chains so that Bob was doing the pulling with Alec merely strolling alongside. It was a constant battle slapping Alec with the reins or prodding him with a stick just to keep him tight against the traces and doing his share. I saw him get in a hurry just a couple of times. Dad was plowing corn with Alec and a spring-tooth plow, scratching in the laying-by fertilizer. A thunderstorm came up over Smokehouse Knob and swept down into the valley. By the time they got to the end of the row, it was raining hard with lightning and thunder at full pitch. Dad unhitched the plow, tucked the reins under Alec’s harness, slapped him on the rump, and watched Alec race alongside the creek to the bridge. A scared mule making a run for the barn in a thunderstorm didn’t have time to contemplate the dangers of a wet wooden bridge. Ol’ Alec simply disappeared in a clap of thunder when his hooves slid out from under him, and he sailed into the creek. By the time Dad got to the bridge, Alec was standing up, shivering a bit, soaking wet, unhurt. Dad laid down on the bridge, got ahold on Alec’s bridle, and led him out of the creek, through the bushes, and up the bank. He turned him loose, but Alec didn’t break for the barn, just plodded along beside Dad. He seemed to be a bit embarrassed by his fall into Rickman Creek. The sun was shining by the time they made the barn, but Dad didn’t take Alec back to the field; he figured that Alec deserved a break from his trials and tribulations.
PLATE 113 “That night we milked the cows in our own barn, slept in our own house … living the dream that Dad had envisioned.” Left to right: siblings William Thurmond, Annette Pressby, and Harold Thurmond
The second one is funny only in retrospect: On that hot, dusty afternoon, I was wading in the creek and running through the hayfield, barefoot and shirtless. Being only seven years old, I was too little to help with the haying, but I liked to watch Uncle Pledger and my brother, William, stack the hay around the pine pole that Dad and Pledger had planted in the ground. It was also fun to run alongside the mules as Dad raked the cut hay to the stack. The two-wheeled metal hay rake rattled and clanked, bouncing over the clumps of grass. Dad sat in a cloud of dust as he drove to and from the haystack, all the while trying to keep Alec from slacking off. Pledger was on the haystack to cap it off—must have been five or six feet up. William was forking the hay up for Pledger to place and tramp down. I was running with the mules when the bumblebees attacked. They ambushed us from underground. In seconds the mules and I were swarmed by black-and-white demons that had burning stingers for tail guns. I ran screaming toward Pledger and the haystack, slapping at the buzzing insects around my head. The mules broke and galloped willy-nilly across the field with Dad holding on for dear life, pulling on the reins and yelling “Whoa!” Pledger threw down his pitchfork, vaulted off the stack, grabbed me up, and ran into the shelter of a nearby cornfield. He finally got all the bees swatted off me and my yowling reduced to pitiful moaning and sobbing. Dad got the mules reined in after a not-so-joyous ride around the hayfield. I had ten or twelve stings and a swollen face and shoulders for a couple of days. I remember Dad saying that Ol’ Alec had no problem pulling his weight with those bumblebees urging him on.
That same field was also the scene of a childhood tragedy. A stray black feist took up with our family. I thought he was the best dog ever and claimed him for mine. We were always together except for in the house. Blackie had to stay outside. He was a ratter, loved to catch mice and rats and sometimes snakes. Someone from the school was plowi
ng our field with a tractor. I was watching the plowing; Blackie was watching for field mice. The tractor finished a furrow, lifted the plows, and made a turn to the next furrow and ran over Blackie. Mercifully, he died instantly and was buried there in that black loam.
Speaking of rats reminds me of Esco Pitts and a rat killing. Esco was a handyman for the school—could drive a tractor, run a pipeline, wire a house. Whatever needed doing, Esco could do it. Esco was helping with the razing of our old house and barn after the new ones were in use. The barn had been cleared except for a pile of corn in the corncrib. Knowing that the pile contained rats, we prepared with sticks and dogs, hoping to kill as many of the pests as possible. Esco derided our preparations, and he said the way to do it was to “just ketch ’em with your bare hands, then squeeze ’em to death right quick-like.” Well, of course, he had to put up or shut up. The corn pile was pushed over, and rats ran in about twelve different directions—up the walls, across the floor, between legs, rats everywhere. The dogs were pouncing and shaking rats, William and I were flailing with our sticks, Esco was grabbing at rats, and Dad was about to fall over laughing. Surprisingly, Esco caught one and squeezed it to death in his hand but suffered several bites before he subdued it. Esco had a way with honeybees. I saw him catch a swarm of bees that were hanging off the back of a trailer. He simply closed a tow [burlap] sack around the teardrop-shaped swarm, shook the sack a bit, and the bees dropped into the sack. There were several bees still on the trailer. Esco raked them into the sack with his bare hand. He wasn’t stung even once.
Esco had a neighbor, Uncle Virgil, who could conjure warts. Uncle Virgil smoked a pipe—not just any pipe, a genuine briar that was as old as Virgil himself and looked it. The stem bent over his lower lip, swooped down to his chin, and flared out into a bowl that was worn smooth in places by Virg’s calloused fingers. The inside was charred and thin from fire and scrapings, the rim burnt by matches, scarred from being rapped on posts and rocks. He looked like a gnome with his battered felt hat cocked on the back of his thinning gray hair, chewed pipe clamped in yellowed teeth, faded blue overalls over a plaid work shirt, short legs barely reaching the ground, and beat-up high-top work shoes that had seen better days. He wasn’t really my uncle; everyone called him uncle. Virgil smiled as he took my small hand. His wrinkled face seemed to become smoother as he examined the wart on the back of my hand. He took his glasses from his overalls, bent down, and peered more closely. He smelled of Prince Albert tobacco and Aunt Sally’s strong black coffee. “How long has it been there?” he asked. “Three weeks, a month … I don’t know.” “Is it sore?” he said. “No, just itchy,” I replied. He took a puff on his pipe, lifted my hand, and blew smoke over the wart. He bent his face over my hand and mumbled unfamiliar words while gently rubbing the wart with a rough thumb. Another puff of pipe smoke completed his conjure; a tousle of my hair sent me off to play with Aunt Sally’s cats. “That should do it,” he told Dad. “Come back in a week if it’s still there.” But we didn’t go back; the wart dried up and dropped off in five days. Each time I smell pipe smoke now, I think of Uncle Virgil, look at the back of my hand and wonder, “Did it really happen?” and then knowing that it did, “How the heck did he do it?”
The Foxfire 45th Anniversary Book Page 46