Former Foxfire student Andrea Potts explained, “We were raised on Betty’s Creek, and we kind of like to look back and remember it like it was. And I don’t like the [development]. Because you think of it as a homeplace and not a vacation land. You hate to see the old people that have worked for their place and then lose it. If I was to get my hands on some land, it would not go unless it was a have-to case. I think in the next ten years, Betty’s Creek will be chopped up and sold. All the old ones are dying and the middle-aged ones are selling it off now.”
Coyle Justice stated, “Local people, people who were born and raised here, they don’t leave because it is getting overcrowded. They might leave to make a better living somewhere else. But most people that leave, sometime or other they come back. Sooner or later, there won’t be a place to come back to. That’s why I wouldn’t even think about selling. If I were to move, I’d still keep the house because if I sold it, somebody else would get it and make something else out of it. So I just wouldn’t think about moving. That’s a mistake. That’s why we are in the predicament we are in now. Too much has been sold.”
Ethel Corn said, “The biggest reason I moved back from Charlotte, North Carolina, was because I was born and raised here. It seems so much better here, and I feel the mountain people is a little better off than them people off down around the cities. The people here are friendlier. Some people like city life, but I don’t, and I never did. But I’ll tell you, you can wonder about a whole lot, but when you go to growing old, you want to get back to where you was born and raised. I wasn’t one bit satisfied ’til I did get back.”
Lassie Bradshaw observed, “We was born and raised here. I ain’t nothing but a mountain woman. There is a song, you can take the girl out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the girl. I have to agree with that. When I got back, I felt like I was home. It’s really hard, you know. When you live out in the country and you have to holler really loud to get your neighbor to hear you. [Living] up there [in Canton, Ohio], you can spit from one house to the other one. It’s really different. I like to get out and hunt and fish. Up there, you had to go to a pool with hundreds of other people. Down here you can just jump in the river. I admit, I really miss the friends I had there. I could have stayed there. But I missed the people down here too. I love the country. There is no place like it!”
Beulah Perry exclaimed, “Clayton has always been my home. I hope to stay here the rest of my life. There is nothing more beautiful than to get up in the morning and look at the mountains. I love Clayton!”
J. C. Stubblefield summed up his feelings about home by saying, “Some of the folks in town asked me if I would like to have a new house, and I said, ‘No, that won’t be home to me.’”
PLATE 20 “You have a feeling for the place where you were born and raised.”—Millard Buchanan
Millard Buchanan commented, “I don’t think there’s anyplace in the world that can compare to this. You have a feeling for the place where you were born and raised. No matter where you’ve been or where you go, deep down in you, there is always a longing to get back home.”
The homeplace isn’t something easily described. Sure, you can touch an old barn or grab a handful of dirt, but the homeplace is more than that. It is a feeling from deep inside that makes you swell with pride one minute and fill your eyes with tears the next. It is an emotion that only the people who toiled in sweat to create homeplaces, and their generations to come, can experience. I also found that even if you are not a farmer or don’t live on the family homeplace, you are still a piece of the puzzle that fits together to form the old homeplace. Your ancestors did the work and you feel as if you, in a sense, did too. There is a personal bond between you and the people who spent the time to take care of the land. This book is dedicated to people who are trying to find their place. I would also like to make my own personal dedication to “the hands”—the hands that fixed the fence lines, plowed the fields, constructed the buildings, and brought new life from the ground. That is what made it possible for us, the next generation, to find our personal utopia, our place that we call home.
REFERENCES
Brown, David G. The American Farm: A Vanishing Way of Life. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1998. The passage cited is on page 15.
Springhouse and Root Cellar
Irwin, John R. The Museum of Appalachia Story. West Chester, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing, 1987.
Slone, Eric. Eric Slone’s Sketches of America Past. New York: Promontory Press, 1986.
Smokehouse
Wigginton, Eliot, and students, eds. The Foxfire Book. New York: Anchor Books, 1972.
Wigginton, Eliot, and students, eds. Foxfire 3. New York: Anchor Books, 1975.
Page, Linda Garland, and Wigginton, Eliot, eds. The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Cookery. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1984.
WIT, WISDOM, AND REMEMBRANCES
“I’ve had a good life …”
The people of Southern Appalachia have always been generous in sharing their wisdom of things past. To fully experience Appalachian culture, one must indulge in a colorful story or two.
Southern Appalachian people are wonderful storytellers. Even the simplest incident or insight can be molded into a fascinating story. A fond memory triggers the beginning of a masterpiece. Whether witty, wise, sanguine, or sad, each story is a unique word sculpture of the personality, sufficiency, and resilience of the culture and its people. A deferential relationship with the land, the people, and the Creator is often a common thread in these stories where hard work, farming, faith, fun, and freedom abound. As Doug Sheppard said, “Having freedom is my idea of being rich.” From living a simple life, these people have gained a foundation of wisdom upon which we and future generations can build. We must look back in order to move forward, for it is in the root of each living thing that strength is found.
Day-to-day life could often seem dismal when the hardships, mishaps, and personal tragedies of mere survival were constantly in focus. Thankfully, each day, though sometimes apparently endless, is but one piece of the giant puzzle of life. When the pieces are fit together, a beautiful picture emerges: a picture of a life fulfilled through heartaches and joys, mistakes and victories, foolhardiness and wisdom. Aunt Arie Carpenter, who lived in Macon County, North Carolina, all of her life, demonstrated the sentiment of life fulfillment when she said, “They want me t’ sell and move away from here. But I won’t do it. It’s just home—’at’s all. I spent my happiest days here.”
Whether or not you reside in Southern Appalachia, you can, if but for a few moments, experience a culture that is truly unique simply by perusing this chapter. Herein is but a minute sampling of the flavor of the mountains. Enough said. Enjoy!
—Teresia Gravley Thomason
COMMUNITY
While there were some small townships and even a city or two, the vast majority of the Southern Appalachian people lived and worked in rural areas. A life filled with almost constant hard work is a trademark memory for this culture. Farming chores, home chores, and manual labor took up most of the day for people in this area. However, brotherly love and community support were a priority. Although hard work was a necessity of survival then, most people continue to express a strong appreciation and preference for the country and this often harsh way of life.
“The community was very cooperative. People were very helpful at that time,” Clive Smith told us. “If anybody needed something done, enough [people] would show up to do the job. You didn’t expect any pay for doing that. Everybody did it. It was expected.
“I think a lot about Luther Stubblefield. When I was sixteen years old, I was sick and in the bed for a month. I believe Luther came every night to see how I was getting along. He’d come in and set and talk with me. I remember that. I think about that a lot. All the other neighbors would come by to see how I was too.”
Susie Smith remembered, “The ladies would work in the kitchen fixing dinner for the corn shuckings. We’d work one day h
ere and one day down at the Stubblefields’—just different places. We’d help pull cane fodder and cut cane to make syrup. If anybody was sick, the neighbors would come and sit up with them at night.”
PLATE 21 Susie Smith
Omie Gragg recalled, “I don’t know [if we had money to get food]. I tell you, the ones that did have it would share with the ones that didn’t have it. If we had it and someone else didn’t, they’d come, and we’d share it with them. What you have now is yours, or what somebody else [has] got is theirs. They don’t come now and expect you to share what they have with them like they did then.
“[We used to use a] five-gallon churn every day. Did you ever see people churn this way? Well, we churned five gallons of milk every day. And we could use all of that butter. It was hard times for people back then. Somebody would knock on your door in the morning, ‘Have you got as much as one-half pound of butter I can have? We don’t have any’ I [would] cut down until I would not have but one-half pound left for my family. We shared with everybody that wanted. If [a neighbor] ever got out of coffee, he’d peck on the door, and I’d have one-half cup of coffee for him. We’d share whatever we had with each other. Just good living!”
FARM LIFE
Rural farm life was the way of life for the majority of people in earlier times. Days were long, filled with chores inside and outside the home. None were excused from the work, for it was not done as excess but as necessity for survival. Harley Gragg recollected, “Back in those days, a main source of [income was the] farm. About the only thing there was to do was farm back then. Make what you lived on on the farm.”
PLATE 22 “We worked all day long. You get up early, and you just stay busy all day.”—Clara Mae Ramey
“I didn’t have any specific jobs that I had to do. Everyone had to help out,” Clara Mae Ramey told us. “You had to carry water, milk the cow, churn butter, cut the cane when it was ready to cut, cut cornstalks, cut wood, and to do all kinds of work.
“I was born at Glassy Mountain. We lived up there until I was four, and then we moved down to Liberty [community]. We had to move because my father worked in an orchard and the spray was getting to his lungs. One day my daddy told my mother, he said, ‘We’ll just move and not look back.’ My daddy bought the one hundred and forty acres down there [in Tiger], and we moved to Liberty.
“At first, in Liberty, we lived in a log house. It did not have partitions in it, but it was home. We hung up quilts and bedspreads and different things for the bedrooms. It was great living there.
“My family and I made big fields of about three acres of green beans. We grew our own corn so we could carry corn to the mill and have it ground for cornmeal. We had a cow for the milk. We made butter and grew cane so we could have homemade syrup. We also had all kinds of fruits and eggs. It was great. For our water, we carried it from half a mile over the hill from the spring. Every morning we got up at four o’clock and put fire in the woodstove, no matter how cold. When I got old enough, it was my turn to build a fire in the fireplace. We worked all day long. You get up early, and you just stay busy all day.
“We were not allowed to eat between meals. At twelve o’clock my mother would quit and go build a fire in the woodstove to fix lunch. Then we’d all go in and sit down together and eat. We would leave the dishes and go right back. After the sun went down, we would go back in and have cornbread and milk. That’s what we had most of the time for supper.”
Esco Pitts thought back upon his life in rural Appalachia. He said, “Just as soon as we got big enough to work, we all had a job. We had to work because that’s how we made our living. Everybody had to work. They didn’t know anything else. You see, there wasn’t any TV or radio or telephone. All the heat we had was one big old fireplace. You could lay a three-foot log in there, and that’s how we kept warm in the wintertime. We cooked on it. Oh, I reckon I was fourteen years old before we even had a cookstove. We cooked on the fireplace in the old black pot. Your cornbread and biscuits baked in the oven in front of the fire. There is nothing to compare with it. I wish I had it today.
“We had to do chores. We knew to do it and do it right! My daddy’d go before us when we were little and show us how, and then we were depended on to do it—whatever it was. We had to get all of our chores done before we could do any playing. We had to cut our own wood and bring it in from the mountains. And then we had stock. The first thing I had to do in the mornings after I got big enough was to drive the cattle to our pasture about a mile and a half and come back and then go to school. Then I’d have to go get the cattle and bring them in for the night—do the milking and the feeding of the stock, taking care of them. That was about the last thing before we had our evening meal. And we didn’t have any light but a little brass lamp—a kerosene lamp—and it furnished the light. Of course, we’d go to the woods and get a lot of lighter pine knots and bring them in, and we’d use that for light to study by. And that’s the way I learned all my first studying. Get our lessons right there in front of the fire—be ready for the next day at school to recite.
“I worked for my neighbors, on the farm or wherever I could get something to do, and whatever I made I had to give to my daddy. Yes, I helped my daddy instead of him helping me, because we were raised poor—but we didn’t suffer. We had plenty to eat and plenty to wear, but that was about it. No extras. We never went to town, I don’t guess, more than three times in a year for anything out of the store. We had a good apple orchard, and my daddy’d gather his apples and take potatoes and cabbage and apples and chestnuts (there was plenty of chestnuts in the world those days) and put them in his wagon and go down in the country and swap them for groceries. [Sometimes] he’d sell them for money, but most of the time he’d swap them for groceries because there wasn’t any money much. He’d bring back a hundred pounds of sugar and maybe fifty pounds of coffee and a whole barrel of flour; and that provided us for a long time. That’s about all we had to buy. We raised all the other stuff we needed—plenty of beans, corn, potatoes, and cabbage.
“We didn’t use any fertilizer in those days. The ground was fertile, and it grew good crops—produced well. It won’t do it today. This old world is getting older, and erosion has taken off a lot of the good top-soil—put it down in the valley and washed it into the ocean. I don’t know why it is, but it’s that way. You can go into the mountains and clear up a brand-new ground—cut all the trees, dig up all the stumps, and plant stuff where nothing has ever been planted before—and it won’t produce like it used to. We didn’t have any insects back then. Nothing to bother anything. You didn’t have to spray your apple trees. You didn’t have to spray your beans or corn, nothing like that. It all grew and produced good, big, heavy crops.
“Well, I’ll tell you, we didn’t have much free time in those days because we had to work to make a living, and we lived on a farm. We had about twenty acres in the farm that we had to work. During the growing season, we were busy all the time. Of course, in the wintertime, we had to get wood to build fires. We did that in all kinds of weather—get out and cut wood—and we didn’t have power saws. We’d have to chop it with an ax. We’d cut wood and snake it down off a mountain cut saw. It just about kept us busy to keep stovewood to cook with and fireplace wood to keep us warm.”
Oliver Meyers’s parents were farmers when he was growing up in the mountains. He recalled, “We had about sixty acres, more or less. My daddy had a syrup mill and made syrup. I never saw a fodder pack. Where I was raised, [we] didn’t pull fodder and cut tops like they do in Georgia.
“I ate real good when I was at home with Daddy and Mother [when I was a child]. We had a bunch of corn, and we canned everything we could get hold of. We had a big dugout where we’d put our cans. We’d go up the steps [from there], and we had a big smokehouse. Then we climbed up a ladder up to a table, [and this was] where we put our onions. We didn’t have any money, but as far as having something to eat, we had plenty.
“[We lived in] some bad [houses]. We lived
in some houses that had big cracks in them, and you could see the chickens down under the floor. When we moved to Fontana [North Carolina], we lived in this little house that just had lumber laid in for the ceiling and had a big old fireplace. [In the winter] it was the coldest, snowiest time you ever saw. The house didn’t leak when it rained, but that round hominy-sized snow covered the boards and [came through]. We got the children and put them on the bed. We took quilts and made a tent-like thing, and that snow was blowing all over the floor. I knew we had [the children] all snuggled in there really good. We had a big old fire going, and we walked back up there. I [sang to the children] ‘Wait now ’til the sun shines down.’ Those old spring boards would leak. Boy, was that a cold house!”
Susie Smith thought back to her childhood days of working in the garden. “I did a lot of daydreaming in the cornfield, parked on top of my hoe handle, about what I wanted to do when I finished school. My main thing was a schoolteacher. That was all I could think of. That’s about the only thing I remember dreaming and wondering about. We had a lot of time to think with that hoe handle. In the long, hot summer days, you had a lot of time to dream.”
Edith Cannon shared, “We were farmers, and we would take all our vegetables, except what we canned, to the market to get enough money for us to buy material so Mama could sew our clothes. We raised our own sheep also. We did not waste anything. Now I don’t think anything about throwing away a piece of material eight to ten inches long, but back in those days we would use the very last stitch.
“When I got big enough, I would plow. I also ran the planter my daddy had. We planted the soybeans so we would have something to feed the cattle with. We always killed two or three hogs and a steer every winter so we could have our own meat. We did not buy anything except material. We had our own ducks, and Mama would pluck their feathers to make our feather beds with. She would make our own pillows too. We sold apples. We had apple trees, so we would take our apples to town and sell them to buy sugar and coffee.
Foxfire 11: Wild Plant Uses, Gardening, Wit, Wisdom, Recipes, Beekeeping, Toolmaking, Fishing, and More Affairs of Plain Living Page 4