It was bad for skunks there where we lived on the school farm. We called it Skunk Holler. One time Dad killed a skunk; he run and chased it on down through the field and shot it with him a-runnin’ full tilt! Didn’t think he killed it. He went back that afternoon, after he got off work, and found out that he had shot it and killed it. Him and Little Brother backed one in the corner of the barn stall and told me to get him somethin’ to kill it with. All I could find was a little ball-peen hammer with a long handle on it. He backed that thing in the corner and beat it in the head while it was a-sprayin’ him and him just a-laughin’—me a way back out of the way so I didn’t get sprayed!
Doris: I filled the washin’ machine up with water; it was an ol’ wringer type of washin’ machine that was on the back porch, and I put the Clorox to it. I would not let ’em in the house with them clothes on. I brought their clothes out there, and they changed on the back porch. I just throwed ’em in that Clorox water and washed ’em and that scent come out. They told me you had to bury your clothes if you ever got sprayed, but that Clorox brought it out.
Jim: Me and Little Brother, Thurman, would set a rabbit trap, and all we ever caught was skunks or possums. If we caught a possum, we’d take it out to Uncle Clyde Cannon; he’d put it in a fifty-five-gallon barrel and feed it and fatten it up and then have possum to eat. He liked it. I couldn’t stand the thoughts of it myself! I wouldn’t try it. They was always somethin’ goin’ on!
Dad got livestock after we got there. We didn’t have ’em before that. Jerry Ayers was who Dad got his cows from. Jerry always had good milk cows. Dad would get ’em from him. He’d just get the hogs wherever he could find some and raise ’em, feed ’em, and kill ’em.
Doris: Thurman also had a calf that he took to the show with the FFA [Future Farmers of America]. I forget now how he did; seems like he won. He got a ribbon of some kind. I believe he got second place or third place.
Jim: The school just had one tractor that they let the Farm Families use, and it was used from one to the other. You put the gas in it, even had headlights, believe it or not, so Dad could work at night! Dad, he farmed till midnight lots of nights. Get up the next mornin’ and be at work at seven!
Doris: I stayed up. I was a-cannin’ most of the time, except in the wintertime.
Jim: Uncle Ott [Arthur] Dills had an ol’ mule we’d borrow. When the school’s tractor wouldn’t be available, we’d go borrow it. He lived over past the rock crusher [the rock quarry], and we’d go over there and get it. Me or Little Brother one would ride it back. Dad would follow us in the car. We’d come to the branch [Darnell Creek] there before you’d get to the plant [Rabun Mills factory] and it’d stop. You could jerk on the reins, kick it; it wouldn’t do nothin’, just stand there. Dad would have to get out, put somethin’ over its eyes, lead it across the bridge and get on the other side, take it off, and he’s ready to go then. He’d go right on down there and walk across the bridge at the Little Tennessee River, never even stopped! Right on down there we’d go and we’d take it down there and plow with it.
I was a-tryin’ to garden one day, and it decided it was dinnertime, I reckon. When I got to the end of the row and tried to turn it around, it kept goin’. I stood up on the plow and jabbed it in the ground as deep as I could and was a-leanin’ back on the reins. It just pulled that head down and just keep a-goin’. Didn’t pay it no attention. Before he tore up the road around through there, I finally just laid the plow over and let him go on. He went up to the barn walkin’, walked in his stall. I got a’ ear of corn and put in there. It eat the ear of corn, and then it was ready to go again. He come out and headed back towards the garden. We got back and finished plowin’ it then.
PLATE 119 “It was bad for skunks there where we lived on the school farm. We called it Skunk Holler.”—Jim Carpenter
“They told me you had to bury your clothes if you ever got sprayed, but that Clorox brought it out.”—Doris Carpenter
I’d go out in the field or in the pasture behind the barn to try and catch the mule. It’d be right there behind the barn, and I’d walk out there with the bridle, and it’d take off to the other end of the field just as hard as it could go. It’d get out there; I’d go out there after it; it’d run right at me and look like he was gonna run right over me and, just before he got to me, he’d rear to the side when I raised that bridle up, like I was gonna slap him with it. He’d rear to the side and go around and then go back out towards the barn. I run back and forth two or three times and got tard [tired] of it. I went in the house and told Dad that I couldn’t catch that mule. He kept runnin’ away. Dad said, “That mule ain’t no problem to catch.” He went out there and put an ear of corn in the bucket, walked out the back, and shook it. That mule come a-flyin’ up there, put his head in the bucket, and started eatin’ the corn. Dad slipped the bridle over his ears. As soon as he got through eatin’, he put the bit in his mouth. We went on and plowed then; had to use gee-haw. Gee is right and haw is left. That ol’ mule—I was a-plantin’ corn with it on a Saturday before I went in the service on a Tuesday, back in 1966—with a one-row corn planter, put fertilizer in one hopper on it and the corn in the other hopper on it. It went out through the row there, and the fertilizer would drop in and cover it, and then corn would drop in and mix it. That was a handy rig. We usually had somebody with a corn picker to come and pick it. It takes a long time to pick corn; they wadn’t enough of us to pick it fast enough by hand!
We’d go back and pick up a lot of corn that the corn picker missed. We’d go back and get that. Plowin’ them fields and usin’ that fertilizer, I was a little boy, but I couldn’t do it now! I’d throw a one-hundred-pound bag of fertilizer on my shoulder, get another one under my arm and go out through the plowed field, and there I went! I was a little more slim and trim back then. I was a hundred and sixty pounds.
I grew a’ acre of peppers for the Campbell Soup Company; we grew bell peppers for them. I planted an acre of it, and we had these fifty-five-gallon drums that we put out in the field that we mixed the plant starter in to water the plants and help them get started. It come up a storm one day, started boilin’ up a storm. Dad said, “Boys, you had better get them barrels out of the field before it washes out from under them and breaks a bunch of pepper plants down.” So we went out there to get ’em. Dad just picked his barrel up and walked out of the field with it. I picked mine up, and bein’ not too bright at the time, I throwed it up over my head and it a-thunderin’ and a-lightnin’. The static off of that lightnin’ hit that barrel and made the hair stand up on both of my arms, plumb up to my shoulders. I throwed down the barrel and broke down more plants than if I had washed out them barrels probably. I didn’t throw it back up over my head when I went to retrieve it and get it out of the garden!
Doris: I had a pea patch out beside the house there, and we made so many peas there that year that I give I don’t know how many away ’cause I couldn’t can ’em all! One time the school asked me to go to Atlanta with ’em to sell some canned foods. I loaded up my canned food and went with ’em. We sold it ever’ bit, and they wanted us to come back and bring some more, but we never did go back.
Jim: We shelled peas, broke beans. I couldn’t eat ’em all! I hate ’em once they’re cooked! Just go out there in the garden and shell ’em out and eat ’em.
Grover Webb lived right around from us. Jay Bird Dills; his real name was Lester, same as my middle name. They called him Jay Bird all the time. He run one of the dairy farms. Uncle Ralph Robinson and Aunt Marjorie, Morris, Gary, and Judy, they run one of the dairy farms. We would go over there sometimes and help with the milkin’ or help put up hay, helped put silage in the silo. We done that quite regular.
We was back and forth all the time. Uncle Ralph and cousin Jay Bird, they had a tractor duel one day. Jay Bird had a John Deere he thought could just outplow anythin’ in the world. Uncle Ralph had a big ol’ orange tractor. He had big ol’ disc plows for it. Jay Bird had the regular plows. They g
ot out there a-plowin’ a field, and Uncle Ralph would make two rounds to Jay Bird’s one—just had Jay Bird all tore up! So he just kept raisin’ his plows up a little higher, plowin’ a little less deep, tryin’ to catch up with him. Uncle Ralph had his down just as far as they’d go and was just a-plowin’ circles around Jay Bird—just beat Jay Bird to death! It was fun! They was all the time fun with somethin’ like that a-goin’ on. We loaded two flatbed wagons; we stacked them things just as high as we could with hay. That ol’ orange tractor of Uncle Ralph’s, it didn’t even slow it down. It was a hoss [powerful] tractor; it could pull.
At the dairy, they always had that one cow that liked to kick. It was a black Holstein. She liked to kick, try to get you, surprise you and get you, so you had to watch her. She never got me, but I seen her get one or two—catch ’em on the arm; they’d have a big ol’ scratch mark all the way down their arm. Jay Bird and them had one that liked to do that, too. She liked to kick. Freddy, their boy, when he was little, that ol’ cow kicked at him one time, and he got a short-handled shovel and walked up around and got in the feed trough. They had their head locked in there. He got in that feed trough with that short-handled shovel and started a-beatin’ that cow between the eyes! He was just a little ol’ bitty thing, but he got up in that feed trough in front of that cow, and he got that short-handled shovel, and he went to workin’ on that head!
Raz Mason lived on the school farm, too. He did some work for them at the school, just general work. They lived around off the Betty’s Creek Road, the back side of Betty’s Creek there. That’s where Raz lived. I’m tryin’ to remember who it was that lived on out there past Jay Bird, the Phillips[es], I think. He was two or three years ahead of me; he was about Morris’s age, I think.
Doris: Now, the Woods lived there when we was there. They had two boys, I know.
Jim: The boys was twins, I think, best I can remember. I think they lived in the house up past Grover Webb; they lived on the same road we lived on [back of the old post office].
Doris: Grover lived in the house back behind us.
Jim: I think at that time the land was actually owned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, or they donated to the school to help build those houses. We lived in the first one there and you went on around, and Grover Webb lived there.
I caught chickens at night and went to school durin’ the day for several months, me and Jimmy Webb, for Furman Vinson. He’d come around in an ol’ Chevrolet van, a panel van, no backseat in it, just a driver’s seat and one other seat. Turner Enloe helped catch; he was one of the ones that helped catch. I’m a-tryin’ to think of that little feller’s name. There was a little dried-up ol’ man that helped catch. Julius was his first name; I can’t think of his last name. It was fun. You was wore out when you went to school. It made it kind of hard to learn; it was an experience! Me and Jimmy usually worked on the truck. We handled ever’ chicken that come out of the chicken house. We usually caught ten thousand a night. They was seven of us, five that would catch ’em and bring them to us. Me or Jimmy one would be stackin’ crates, and the other one puttin’ chickens in ’em. Put fourteen chickens to a crate.
I guess I was about seventeen. They’d come around in the ol’ panel van and pick us up, and we would go to wherever we was gonna catch that night. We worked from Tallulah Falls to the other side of Franklin, North Carolina. We went to the other side of Franklin to get roosters and layin’ hens, some of them with them big spurs on their feet. We’d catch three of ’em at a time and bring out there. They’d just kick and just about jerk your arm out of socket! We’d put them in. We started out from there. The road down was down a bank, I guess you’d say, just about washed. Billy Long was a-drivin’ the truck, and he turned around that curve and the truck started rarin’ up, and five of us grabbed ahold of the chains that was holdin’ the crates on and held on to ’em and rode on the upper side of the truck to hold it down enough for him to get around that road. That’d be a little against OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] regulations now! Back then, you done what you had to, to get the job done. We had some fun times a-doin’ that.
Doris: I wouldn’t call that fun.
Jim: We had kinfolks that come by and everythin’, and we’d pop dishpans full of popcorn and eat popcorn. You worked all day and half the night, but it always seemed like there was time for family back then.
Doris: We didn’t have a television, but we got one before we left Rabun Gap–Nacoochee School.
Jim: You went to school and church; I didn’t even get to go to a ball game until I was in the twelfth grade. Tuesday night was church night at our church and that was ball game night, so I was in twelfth grade and FFA had the concession stand. They let me off one night there from church to go work the concession stand! Due to old age and poor memory, there is no warranty—expressed, implied, or otherwise—on this information!
Editor’s note: Doris and Jim lost their wonderful daughter and sister Marie shortly after this interview was conducted in summer 2010. Marie was a loved and loyal member of the Foxfire family as well, having been comanager of Foxfire’s gift shop, along with her sister-in-law, Jim’s wife, Paulette, for the past six years. She was such a blessing to us every day through her strong faith, and she will truly be missed.
“I can remember in the fall of the year …”
~Bobbie Dills Carter~
The Dills family moved to the school farm in 1962. Jay Bird and his sons ran a dairy farm, while wife, Bobbie, worked at a nearby factory. Bobbie reminisces about a wonderful home, good neighbors, and cherished family memories.
—Kaye Carver Collins
We moved to the school farm in 1962, I think. Fred Kelly come and asked us if we would be interested in goin’ to work on the school farm. My husband, Jay Bird [Lester Dills], and I decided we would do it. I had a really gentle, good milk cow, and my father-in-law traded me a car for the cow when we moved. I was workin’ at Rabun Mills while Jay Bird and the boys run the dairy farm. So havin’ a car was a necessity. I loved it when we moved to the school farm. We got a house with water and a bathroom in it! It was somethin’! We stayed four and one-half years! We had six kids altogether—Jerry, Lee, Allen, Elizabeth, Fred, and Gail.
A funny thing happened when we moved over there. Jay Bird was helpin’ Ralph Robinson with his hogs, and he was goin’ over a fence, tripped, and fell in a big mud hole where the hogs had been. He was covered in mud from his head to his toes! The feller he was helpin’ said that it was so funny that he had to laugh; even if Jay Bird had killed him, he had to laugh.
We had a dog named Bossy, and he was really good at helpin’ get in the cows. All you had to say was “Bossy, go get the cows.” And he would go gather them in! One day Jay Bird said he didn’t believe that dog would bite anybody. He said, “I’ll prove it to you.” So he snuck off to the barn and put on a big old coat and covered hisself up and come sneakin’ up to the house. When he got close, Bossy started growlin’ at him. Jay Bird come on up there and reached out like he was gonna grab the dog. That dog took off after him! Jay Bird run and went up a tree! He kept sayin’, “It’s me, Bossy! It’s me!” We like to have never got that dog away from the tree so Jay Bird could come on down!
I can remember in the fall of the year, they would have a big get-together and make sorghum syrup. Every family got some to take home with them. We had lots of good neighbors there. We was all the time helpin’ each other and havin’ fun together. One time Raz [Erastus] Mason was over at the house, and Fred and Gail always run around barefooted. Well, Raz took out his pocketknife and told my younguns that if they didn’t put on their shoes, he’d cut off their toes with his knife! Ever time they saw Raz a-comin’, they’d run to find their shoes and put them on!
Sod [Cliff] Conner would come by and leave supplies for the cows ever’ once in a while. One day they was puttin’ up the stuff, and Gail and Fred was runnin’ all around them, and Sod was afraid the kids might get hurt, so he got out this big sac
k and told them, “If you don’t quit runnin’ around out here, I’m a-gonna put you in this here sack and take you home with me!” They took off runnin’ to the house and dived under a bed to hide. After he left, we got to huntin’ them kids and couldn’t find them anywhere! We hunted in the barn, in the house, everywhere! I finally found them up under my bed, sound asleep!
PLATE 120 “When they got them up and movin’ toward the dairy barn, he and Lee would lay down where the cow had been layin’ to get warm.” Jerry, Jay Bird, and Lee Dills
Jay Bird and the boys worked the dairy barn. Jerry helped with the milkin’, and Lee cleaned out all the milk containers. Jerry told me years later that sometimes they couldn’t get Bossy to gather all the cows in, and he and Lee would go out in the pasture barefooted to bring in the cows. He said it would be cold and some of the cows would be layin’ down. When they got them up and movin’ toward the dairy barn, he and Lee would lay down where the cow had been layin’ to get warm.
Jay Bird had a tank with gasoline in it outside that he used for some of the farm equipment. He got to noticin’ that his gas was missin’, so one night he decided to go out and wait and see who was stealin’ his gas. We went on to bed and after a while I heard a gunshot! The man took off runnin’ and left his gas cans! Jay Bird had hit him and was able to track him back on an old road up behind the house. He must have left his car parked there while he come down and tried to steal the gas. We found out later that Jay Bird had shot him in the hind end. He had to go to the doctor to get shot out of his backside!
The Foxfire 45th Anniversary Book Page 49