PLATE 23 Edith Cannon
“We canned the foods we needed for winter. We didn’t have pressure cookers back then. We had a big washpot that we used. My daddy made a rack to sit down in the wash-pot so Mama could set seven or eight half-gallon jars in it. We would keep the fire under it and boil them three hours. For tomatoes and berries, we would use the open kettle method—just heated it on the stove, sterilized our jars, and put it in.”
DISCIPLINE
Good behavior, respect for elders, and a disciplined work ethic were essential to Southern Appalachian child-rearing. Clear guidelines and consistent correction helped many generations of Appalachian children grow into fine, honest adults. Threats of physical punishment were used when necessary, but most people remember obeying the wishes of their parents out of respect and love.
“We had a pretty strict rearing—not hard, but we had rules and regulations that we would abide by,” Winnie Lovell remembered. “We shucked and shelled corn, helped feed the chickens and the cows, and got the wood in at night for the fire the next morning. If it was your job to get the wood and the kin’lin’ in, and you didn’t get it, you had to get up the next morning and get it then. You soon learned to do what you’re supposed to do.”
PLATE 24 “You soon learned to do what you’re supposed to do.”—Winnie Lovell
Jesse Ray Owens shared, “My parents were strict. If they told you something to do, then you knew to do it. You couldn’t just wait around and try to get out of doing it. You had to do it right away. You didn’t back-talk ’em or nothing. They was good to us and all that, but when they told us something, they meant it, and I say that was good.”
Clara Mae Ramey revealed, “You didn’t stand around and whine, boy, uh-uh. If you ever gave one excuse [for not doing your chores], you got whipped with a razor strap. I did not like that.”
HARD TIMES
At one time or another, almost all of the people of the Southern Appalachians saw difficult days. Money was scarce, and every basic need was provided through backbreaking labor and pioneer persistence.
“We [have been] through some pretty tough times,” Oliver Meyers declared. “We lived over in Clay County [North Carolina] after the Depression hit, and we got down to where I couldn’t [find] any job. [We didn’t have much to eat.] We just had cornmeal. We got it ground, and then [we] had to sift it out. We made coffee, and a lot of times we wouldn’t have anything but onions and cornbread and that coffee made out of grain. It was pretty good.
“[One of the hardest times of my life] was in 1932, when we had just recently been married, and we were staying across the mountain from Tate City. It was during the Depression, and we couldn’t get a job anywhere. I built a scaffold to dry apples, and they were what we lived on—dried fruit and groundhogs. I’d catch every [groundhog] I’d come to. That’s [all we] had to eat [besides cornbread].
“It [really] pleased [my wife] to see me coming [home] with a big woodchuck. We’d cook that rascal, [and] I’d dress him. [After I cleaned out parts of the woodchuck] I’d dress that thing good, and then I’d go and cut some spicewood and break it up and put it in [the big old iron pot] with the woodchuck. [My wife would] cook it until it was real good and tender, then take it out and put it in the stove and brown it. Boy, was it good!”
Adam Foster’s recollection also revealed hard but happy times. “[When we were living at home with our parents,] we had to get out here and hoe corn, cut wood, plow the mules, and build fences. I’d rabbit hunt when I had the time and Daddy didn’t have something for us to do. If it was drizzling rain or something, us boys would get out and hunt or fish. We didn’t get much time off, I’ll tell you, on account of we had to work every day to live back in that time. We had our farm and all like that, but that wasn’t saying we had any money.
“Back then you couldn’t get a dollar. Money was hard to get. Yeah, things are a lot different than they was when I come along through the world. And I’m still here horse-trading. I’ve worked a many a day for fifty cents after me and my wife were married and were raising our children. Of course, I’ve always had land and a place, and I didn’t have to get out and pay rent. I always had a farm to work on, but I couldn’t get no money, no job. I’d go out there and work for fifty cents a day, and I thought I done pretty good. That was pretty hard times back then, but we lived good, I guess—had plenty to eat and enough to wear to keep us warm, but it wasn’t the finest like people want now. I don’t know how people ever made it.”
RELIGION
Hard work and a strong faith went hand in hand for most families in earlier times. Belief in God and church attendance were foundations for enduring hardships. Many people with whom we spoke shared heartfelt testimonies and endearing memories of church life.
Bernice Taylor recalled the importance of going to church. “We had a [church] meeting every fourth Saturday and every fourth Sunday. That was all the meetings we had unless it was revival. Then we had Sunday school every Sunday. We’d go over there, and they’d sing, and have Sunday school, and then sing some more. We’d leave here about a quarter ’til ten or twenty minutes ’til [and] we wouldn’t get back home ’til one o’clock, and they’d have to cook dinner for forty. They didn’t hurry up. They just took their time and sung several songs before and after Sunday school.
“[We] always had a big crowd. Back when you had revivals, all the churches watched out and didn’t have [their] revivals when [the other churches] were having it. Everybody [would] come to Wolf Creek, and then they had [revival] the next week somewhere else, and everybody went there. We’ve walked many a time from here to Lakemont church and here to Camp Creek. Sometimes we didn’t get home ’til twelve at night. [We] didn’t get in bed ’til one or two o’clock. [Then] we got up about five o’clock. We had to get our farming done and get ready to go to church at eleven when a revival was going on.
“[Back then we] just [had] the Baptist [denomination]. One time, we was over there, and I don’t remember whether it was revival or just regular Sunday service, [but] a funny-type man said ‘Amen’ [big and loud] when somebody was praying, and they churched him ’cause he said Amen.’ He might have not meant for it to have been like that, but they still churched him. [They] kicked him out of the church. [They] sure did that!
“[That] didn’t happen often, but you didn’t dance or play cards; [if] church members found out about it, [there would be trouble.] I remember when Papa wouldn’t even let a stack of cards come in the house. The boys would slip around and play them, but they didn’t bring them things in the house. Times are a lot different now than what they used to be.”
Aunt Addie Norton told us, “I sit here and study by myself when I have a lot of time, and I think about things. I’ve got so I can’t read my Bible much because I can’t see to read for long at a time. I think how thankful people ought to be that they’re living in this beautiful world, and I wonder how they can ever think that there is not a higher power. Who makes all these pretty flowers? We can make artificial flowers, but they don’t smell and are not as pretty as the flowers that we pick out there. We can’t make flowers like the Almighty.”
Esco Pitts said, “I advise you not to be carried away with the ways of the world. The Bible says love God and love your neighbor. That’s the commandment that Jesus gave. Love God and love your neighbor. In order to do that, you’ve got to study the Bible a whole lot, and you’ve got to go to church and hear the gospel preached. You’ve got to mix and mingle with Christian people, and you’ve got to worship your Maker. We were put here for a purpose. This world was made for man’s enjoyment—for man’s use. Man was put in charge of the world and everything that’s in it. We don’t realize it, but the Spirit of the Lord is present at any time. You can call on it any time. If you call on it in faith, you’ll get an answer.”
Ethel Corn had this to say about luck. “I heard of people taking a rabbit’s foot for good luck. I don’t see where that can bring you any good luck. I have learned through life that the
only place you’re going to get luck is by serving God and being close to Him. Good things will come your way. But if you’re serving the devil, all of the clover leaves and rabbit’s feet aren’t going to help you any.”
PRANKS AND JOKES
Although much time was consumed with work and chores, everyone found time for socialization and recreation. In the face of adversity, these people were still able to laugh and live life to the fullest. Most of the fun was homemade and relished by the whole family. Several contacts shared memories of playing as children and how they entertained themselves as adults.
Pulling pranks and jokes on friends and neighbors was a common source of fun. Wholesome diversions were a priority at home, at church, at work, and at school. Many pranks were pulled around the holidays, especially Halloween and Christmas. Aunt Arie Carpenter said, “I don’t reckon the devil’ll get me fer laughin’, but if he does, he’ll shore get me ’cause I’ve always done more’n my share of the laughin’ in the world.”
Many people took the pranks well, while others got mad. Ethel Corn said, “They felt sorta like they do now—some took it in fun, and some’d get awful mad about it. Some people could take a joke, and some couldn’t. You find it the same way today. People were just out to have a bunch of fun—they didn’t usually pick one person or family to play pranks on because they didn’t like them. It didn’t make no difference who they done it to, just any house they come to. They was just out for a bunch of fun, and they had their fun. And they got bawled out over it.”
PRANKS AT SCHOOL
Some of the pranks played at school were pulled on fellow students, but many were played on the teachers.
Clive Smith recalled a joke he and the principal pulled on one of the teachers. “One thing that happened in high school [was that] the French teacher seemed to go out of her way to try to make things harder for [us kids]. She was [always] real fussy. One day in class, there were several kids that were talking to each other. She jumped up from her desk and shouted, ‘Shut up! I’m tired of tellin’ you! I’ve told you two hundred times to stop talking in class!’
“Well, I couldn’t help it and I said, ‘Two hundred!?’ [I said that] because it sounded ridiculous that she’d told us two hundred times not to talk. Boy, she jumped on me and said that I was gonna get what I deserved. She took me to the principal’s office and told him [what happened].
“So the principal said that he’d handle it and told her to go back to keep order in the class. She went out and closed the door, and he asked me what happened. I told him. So he signaled for me to be quiet and he said, ‘I’m gonna have to punish you now, so you won’t do that again.’ He said it real loud [because] the teacher was standing outside the door [listening]. He told me to stand up. He went to slapping down on top of his desk to make it sound like he was whacking me with his yardstick. He hit [the desk] about eight or ten times and [then he] went over and cracked the door. The teacher was going down the hall a-gigglin’. She thought that he’d really plastered me! Things like that is what I remember about school.”
Minyard Conner reminisced, “When I was in school in the fifth grade, it was in a one-room schoolhouse with one teacher. Along in the early fall, we was all playin’ Anty Over over at the schoolhouse, havin’ a cuttin’-up time. The teacher rang the bell for us to come in. All the students on the back side of the house just stepped in through a low window instead of going around front. Me and a husky boy was the last two steppin’ in [the window], and the teacher turned around from the door and seen us, and then he really gave us a licking. He didn’t say nothin’ to the rest of the students. Well, me and him [the other boy] got together an’ talked a little about it; the teacher was a grown man about forty-four years old. We had to walk back an’ forth to school, and he’d always wait ’til we’d all left school before he left, and he’d come on later. There was a big hornets’ nest beside the road—great big hornets’ nest. We decided to stir up that nest for the teacher when he come by. One of us stayed at the hornets’ nest, and the other got up on the hill to watch for the teacher. When he come around the bend, the one on the hill signaled to the one by the hornets’ nest. Well, the one at the nest hit the nest and ran. He ran as fast as he could. Then we both got up on the hill behind some bushes where we could see. The teacher come walkin’ up with his head down, and them hornets all just ZZZZZZZZZ in his face. God! That hat went up in the air, and he went to stompin’ his big feet—he had about number twelve shoes—and then he run just as hard as he could go.
“Next day he come to school, and he could just see a little out of one of his eyes, and he had big lips; they was just turned wrong side out. He said he’d give five dollars to find out the one who stirred up that hornets’ nest. Dollars looked awful big then, but me an’ that other feller didn’t say nothing to nobody. He’d a beat us up again. We got even with ’im.”
Buck Carver told us about a prank played on him one day. “I got one pulled on me one time at the two-room schoolhouse. Ralph Burrell had been a-cutting match heads off and sticking them in his knife. He would pull the blade down just a little and stick them in. When the blade was pulled back and hit that match head, it would pop like a cap pistol. One day I leaned over and told him I wanted to borrow his knife to sharpen my pencil. I flipped the blade back—everything was quiet in the room—and it went off. It sounded like a twelve-gauge shotgun. The teacher didn’t give me time to explain that I didn’t know it was loaded. She whopped the heck out of me.”
Harry Brown related, “A couple of the boys was out a-possum huntin’, and they caught a little small civet cat [according to Mr. Brown, a small striped skunk-like animal with an odor stronger but similar to that of a skunk]. The schoolteacher had a big table with a drawer in it, and they took that small civet cat, put it in the drawer, and when the teacher opened the drawer, she got sprayed. Oh, we had a nice time in the schoolhouse there for a while!”
PRANKS AT HOME
Homesteads were the site of numerous pranks. Family members played pranks on one another, neighbors good-naturedly tricked neighbors, and strangers had fun with homeowners while passing through.
“We used to do everything, we boys did. Guess we did everything there was to be done,” Lawton Brooks remembered. “Anything mean, and get by with it. We didn’t hurt anybody, just did things we oughtn’t to do. We didn’t have things to do like other people, you know, no cars to ride in. We just did something to pass the time.
“We’d do things to people like taking their wagon apart and put it together up on top of their barn astraddle of the roof, and they’d have to take them down a piece at a time.
“We’d run off, and then we’d laugh at them when they’d go to tearing them down, and they’d rare and growl, ’cause the only way they could get their wagon down was to do like we done, get up on the barn and take it down a piece at a time. He’d have to take every piece loose to get it down off the roof of the barn.
PLATE 25 Lawton Brooks
“When men come to get their corn ground, we’d put cockleburs under their saddles [and we’d] be upstairs looking out the window. One mule threw a fellow off and went off and left the old man.
“He lived up on Shooting Creek [North Carolina], and that mule had to go back across that creek. When the mule went out of sight, he was flying. The old man waited there ’til a man that lived about two miles away from him happened to come to the mill in a wagon. He hauled the old man back as far as his house, and that old man carried his meal the other two miles home. He said he knew the mule had gone back home. He said he couldn’t figure what was wrong. That mule had always been gentle.
“We’d go by people’s houses and get their ax and hide it in the woodpile and they’d have to hunt their axes out. They knowed somebody had done it, though, because it was a custom, people going around and hiding people’s things like that. They’d keep a-hunting. We’d hide it where they’d find it, but they’d have to hunt for it to find it. I’ve took the horses outta the stable an
d put their cows in a different stable where their horses was, and they’d go to milk and find their horses, instead of cows, and that’d make them mad, and they’d growl about that. We oughta been killed, but we weren’t. They ought to beat the devil out of us for doing such things as that.”
Buck Carver reminisced, “Bill Martin was all the time pulling pranks on Uncle George Grist. George was married to Bill’s sister. There was panthers there where they lived. Old man Grist had a mare that had a young colt. Bill Martin slipped over there after George was in bed. He took a stick and was a-tickling that old mare’s heels. The mare was a-kickin’ the walls and a-raising Cain. George was afraid to go over there. He was afraid it was that panther. He’d get out in the yard and holler, ‘Hey, Bill!’ He wanted Bill to come over there. Uncle Bill was right there, but he just laid quiet while George was hollering. The mare would quiet down, and George would go back in and go to bed. Bill would give him enough time to get in the bed and get straightened out good; then he’d start tickling the mare again. He done that two or three times. The last time, when the light come on in George’s house, Bill throwed his pole down and run down to the branch near the house. George started hollering, ‘Hey, Bill! Hey, Bill!’ Bill raised up out of the branch and said, ‘What did you want, George?’ Old man Grist offered Bill a heifer if he wouldn’t tell that tale on him. But Uncle Bill would get about half drunk, and he had to tell it every time.
“When I was about fifteen, I was going to Dillard one day, and when I passed by the early harvest tree, there was my brother Bill and my sister Mabel. Bill was in the tree, shaking off apples, and Mabel was on the ground picking them up. I hid good behind the trunk of another tree. I “changed my voice to sound just like old man Grist and I said, ‘Hey there, boys. Get out of my apple tree.’
Foxfire 11: Wild Plant Uses, Gardening, Wit, Wisdom, Recipes, Beekeeping, Toolmaking, Fishing, and More Affairs of Plain Living Page 5