“Mabel said, ‘Bill, there’s Mr. Grist! Get down from there!’
“Bill nearly fell out of that tree. When he got down, I walked out and showed them who it was. It made them about half mad.
“Daddy pulled one on me one time. He told me to roll him a cigarette, but he only smoked a pipe. Boy I rolled him one just as pretty and smooth as you ever seen. I wasn’t a-thinking that he was trying to trap me. I licked it and sealed it and handed it to him. He looked that cigarette over good and close, and then he said, ‘Now, by josh, that likes a whole lot of being the first one you ever rolled.’
“My brother Pritch would tie a string to his pocketbook, throw it in the road, and hide in a thicket. When a car would come by and stop to get the wallet, he’d pull it back down into the thicket. One or two boys wised up to it, and they’d run over the string, slam on their brakes, get the pocketbook, and take it on with them.”
Kimsey Hampton told us, “When I was a little feller and just big enough to start a-courting, I was afraid of the dark. I’d see something along the road and think it was a booger and I’d run. So one night I was a-taking this girl home, and this bunch of boys decided they’d give me a scare. They took some old chicken wire and kinda doubled it up around a great big thing and put a sheet over it and tied a wire to it and put the wire across the road up in the forks of a bush. Up above this, they put two sacks of leaves, one on each side of the road, and put a wire from one over to the other. Well, I looked, and I could see that thing, and every time I would look at that thing, it would weave. They’d pull that wire up on the hill, and I didn’t know it.
“So after a while that white thing crawled up the bank of the road and across the road and on up the other bank and climbed a tree. I seen that thing, and I just knowed it was a booger. So I was ashamed to go back to my girlfriend’s house, and I knowed good and well if I could get even with it, I could outrun it. I got up just about even with that thing, and I broke to run just as hard as I could go. ‘Bout the time I made two or three big steps, my big toe got hung in that wire and both sacks of leaves hit me right in the face. I hollered ’til you could hear me for two miles. I just knowed that thing had me!”
Harry Brown told us about a prank played on newlyweds. “When old Diamond got married, some of his friends sneaked into his and his wife’s house before they got home and tied a bell to their bedpost. They stuffed some rags in the bell so it wouldn’t ring when they got into bed, and had a string rigged up and attached to the rags and pulled it out after they got into bed. Then, while the couple was asleep, one of ’em sneaked in, grabbed their clothes, and sewed them up—sewed up his pants and coat and shirt and her dress—sewed ’em together just like quilting all over. They like to never got their clothes on the next morning!”
PRANKS AT CHURCH
Oftentimes the church was the center of the community. Almost everyone attended because it was a way of life. It was also an opportunity to see friends and neighbors and catch up on the news. Children and teenagers took advantage of this gathering to pull pranks on the church family.
“Mel Lamb and a bunch of others were bad to turn the saddles around on people’s horses while they were at the night services at church,” Buck Carver recalled. “The people didn’t know nothing about it, and they’d start to [mount] their horses and find out. They’d have to turn the saddles around.”
Kimsey Hampton remembered, “Me and some boys went to church one time up at Inman Hill in North Carolina. There was a woman and her husband that went to church all the time, and her husband was church superintendent. She decided one time that she owned the church. She got her a tablet and pencil and got next to the window in church, and she was going to see all the boys on the outside who were skipping church and take their names down. She was gonna see them in the courthouse in Waynesville.
“I was kind of a mean boy and didn’t care hardly what I done. I told a buddy of mine to get down there below the church a piece, and to turn his cap the wrong way and kinda pull his coat up around his neck. When I motioned for him, he was to come by the window. So he got down a little below the end of the church. It was after dark, and this woman was sitting right next to the window. I went down below the church and cut me a limb looked like a fishing pole about eight feet long and trimmed it up right real good. I got right behind the window where I knowed she’d stick her head out, so I motioned for that old boy to come. He come a-running as hard as he could run. That old woman stuck her head out the window, and she had on a little of stylish hat that looked like a hornets’ nest on one side of her head. Just as she stuck her head out the window looking up the way he was running, so she could see who it was to take his name down, I cut down on her neck with that fishing pole, and it popped kinda like a whip. That little hat flew right straight up and rolled down the hill. Me and her husband went the next day looking for it and found it way down the hill from the church, and from that day on she would never set next to the window anymore.
“Another time me and some boys were around the church in back (the church was kinda rounded behind), and the pulpit where the preacher stood was kinda rounded. The people that sung set on that bench that circled around in the back end of the church. The church was made out of old-time pine lumber and had a big old pine knot out of it, and it left a hole in there under that bench. Me and some boys were looking through that knothole one time, and I see’d a woman’s leg right down in front of that knothole. I just reached through it and got ahold of her leg, and she got up and screamed, and my daddy was the preacher, and he jumped up and hollered ‘Amen’ and grabbed her and thought she was shouting, and it was me that had ahold of her leg.
“When I was a little boy about seven year old, they was having meetin’ in a church up here, and there was about four or five steps from the ground you had to go up into the church. Uncle Hamstalk had a apple orchard up the road above the church, and I went up there an’ got me some apples an’ come back down, and was standing in front of the church door eatin’. Uncle Hamstalk had a long white beard come down him nearly a foot. Looked kinda like Santa Claus. He was in the church a-preachin’. I decided I’d throw one of his own apples at him. I rared back and throwed one apple in there and hit him right in the mouth with it. I see’d what I’d done, and I run into the church door lookin’ back out. Ever’body jumped up, broke up the meetin’, and they wanted to know where that apple come from, and I told ’em they’s some boys on the outside throwin’ apples at me. We got out there and got to huntin’, and I helped hunt like everybody, and it was me the one that throwed the apple.”
HOLIDAY PRANKS
Several people remember pranks and jokes that were played around various holidays. Because tangible gifts were often scarce, having a good laugh was an inexpensive treat that everyone could enjoy together.
Roy Mize told us, “One time we tied up the heads of a bunch of a man’s cattle [with old rags]. The family who owned the cattle had about four growed-up children, and they’s all the time some of ’em havin’ the headache. They’d go around with something tied around their heads. We tied up a bunch of their cattle’s heads one night at Halloween [to make fun of them], and they got sorta sore about it.”
PLATE 26 Roy Mize
Ethel Corn recalled, “On Halloween, they just went around to the houses an’ done meanness. They slipped around and didn’t make no racket. They’d wire their doors shut from the outside, put their buggies on their porches, fill the buggy up with cabbage. I never did get into that. Poppy’d have skinned me alive! I was afraid to! But I knowed a lot of ’em that did. It didn’t ruin the cabbage; it was the time o’ year cabbage should be took up. They’d pull ’em up by the roots, so then all the people had to do to store their cabbage was to bury ’em.
“On Halloween people’d also take soap an’ go around to the stores an’ other places of business and soap them good. Just wet the soap and rub it all over the windows. Some people have put paint around on windows. They just messed up the windows of
stores and such. They never did people’s houses—they’s afraid they’d get caught and get shot!”
MORE PRANKS
Pulling pranks wasn’t limited to any one environment, as you will see in the following stories. Anyone and any subject were fair game. All it took was imagination, mischief, and in some cases, a touch of bravery.
“We used to go snipe hunting,” said Florence Brooks. “You take somebody snipe hunting and put them at the end of a ditch holding a bag. Tell them you’re gonna scare the snipes in. You go back home and leave them there holding the bag. Some of ’em will stay nearly all night. There ain’t no such thing as a bunch of snipes. You won’t get it on nobody but one time.”
Ada Kelly shared, “I had a date with a young man who lived four or five miles from me. He came Sunday morning to spend the day. He had a brand-new buggy that he had driven over in. I had a brother about eleven or twelve, and he had a friend visiting him. While we ate dinner, they filled the back of my date’s buggy with pumpkins and switched his front and back wheels. (My brother and his friend didn’t eat.) He didn’t know about it ’til time to leave that afternoon. (The pumpkins were in the space where the top folded down.) He saw the boys watching him from a hill, and he drove off as if nothing had happened. When he got out of sight, he changed the wheels again. But he didn’t find the pumpkins until a good while later. They were hidden under the folded-down buggy top and started to rot.”
PLATE 27 Lelia Gibson
Lelia Gibson remembered, “When we lived in Burning Town [North Carolina], we lived near an uncle of mine [by marriage] who was a strong Democrat. You couldn’t name a Republican in his presence. He was out on the porch at his house and these two men came along. Just for meanness, they sang as they went up the road across from where my uncle lived. The two men running for the presidency were William Bryan and William McKinley. The men sang:
‘McKinley rides on a big white horse,
Bryan rides the roan.
McKinley stays at the big White House,
Bryan stays at home.’
It made my uncle so mad he said he was going to go out and whip ’em!”
Minyard Conner told us, “There was a coon hunter who was out hunting all the time. He had a good coon dog, but another feller was catching all the coons, and he wasn’t catching none. So he asked the other feller why. This other feller had a little monkey along with him. That feller said his monkey helped him. He said that he put him down in the swamp where the moss is on the tree, and you couldn’t see him.
“Well, this feller would tree a coon or his dog would. He had a little .22 pistol, and when his dog would tree one, he would give his monkey the pistol and tell him to go up the tree and find the coon. The monkey would go up there and hunt around, find the coon, shoot him out, and come on down.
“Now this [first] feller got so interested in it, he wanted to buy the monkey. The other man said he’d sell him the monkey. He took the monkey and went off hunting with him. His dogs treed a coon, but moss was hanging down from the tree, and he couldn’t see the coon. He gave the monkey the pistol and told him to go up and find the coon, and he was gone and gone and gone. He couldn’t find the coon. He come back down to the foot of the tree and shot the dog.
“The next time he saw that other feller, he said, ‘Your monkey killed my dog.’
“The other feller said, I forgot to tell you about that monkey. He hates a lying dog.’”
PLATE 28 Ethel Corn
Ethel Corn said, “One time we was sleddin’ out tanbark, me an’ Mel an’ Poppy an’ Bill. Mel had some little ol’ hound pups, and it was hot. We’d have to go up places as steep as a horse’s face nearly, and that’d just tickle Bill to death. He’d let ’em get way up there [near the top], then he’d jerk their feet from under ’em, and those poor little of pups would go just scootin’ back down the hill. I watched him do that, and I thought how funny it’d be to do him that way. So I let him get to the top, and I jerked his feet from under him, an’ boy, down on his belly and down the hill he went slidin’. I took around the hill. I was afraid to stay around him. I got my distance and begged him to not do nothing to me. He said, I won’t this time, but if you ever do it again, I’ll whip ya.’
“I said, ‘Now, Bill, you know how them poor little pups felt.’”
ENTERTAINMENT
Toys were not in abundant supply and recreational time was sparse in earlier times. Most children used common objects touched with a little imagination to create toys and games, and children and adults alike were more than happy to play with anything available.
“Sunday was about the only time us girls had any time to do anything,” Susie Smith told us. “Most of the time, we’d either be at our neighbors’ or they would come and visit us. We’d go out here in the woods and find big fluffy moss and sweep a place out here in the yard to make us a dollhouse. We just had all kinds of dollhouses and furniture made out of moss. We didn’t have the yard then that we’ve got now. We had apple, peach, and plum trees out here in the yard [then]. We would [also] go out and hunt the trailing arbutus when they would start blooming. We thought they smelled so good and were so pretty. We would [also] go visiting on Sundays to our neighbors, the McKays, the Williamses, and the Stubblefields. The Stubblefields and us are about the only ones that’s in the same place.”
Clive Smith recalled, “At school and on weekends is where I remember [doing] most of the ball playing [as well as other games]. Somebody always had a sponge [or string] ball. We’d choose up sides and play. We called it town ball, but it was like baseball. We had three bases, a pitcher, and a catcher for each side. We [also] played marbles. In the late twenties, rolling a hoop was [popular]. We’d get ahold of a metal hoop and take a strip of wood and nail a T-bar across it. [We would] get out there and see who could roll that hoop the furthest without letting it fall over. Back then we got to where we could roll one for miles and turn it around and come back. I’ve spent hours doing that.
“Another thing the boys did [was to] make a sled and get out in the woods and find a steep place to slide down the hill. If your sled is made out of oak, after you’ve used it a few times, the bottom of the sled runner will get just as slick as glass. We’d take our sleds and go out and slide down all the steep hills around here to see who could go the furthest before we hit a bush or smacked a tree. It’s amazing that none of us got killed.
“And a lot of times, us boys would get out in a thicket and climb one tree and see who could go the furthest swinging from one tree over to where we could cross over to another tree and then to another one. [We would] see who could go the furthest without having to come down. Like I said, it’s amazing that none of us were killed.”
PLATE 29 M. S. York
M. S. York shared this story about candy pullings. “Over on Liberty, around Tiger, the young people would go over there, and I would walk the girls home and stay over there on Sunday There were lots of young people over on Liberty. They would gather up there on Sunday and there would be twenty-five and thirty. I would run around with my nephews mostly and cousins. That was about all there was on the creek here. We had to walk everywhere, and we would have parties and play games. We’d all gather up at one of the neighbors’ houses.
“We’d have a candy pulling every once in a while. You’d pull it until it would change color, and it would get to where you could twist it up. It would get hard. It took a lot of pulling!
“Mrs. Dickerson would get us to her house, and it was supposed to be a sangin’ but it wasn’t. They wouldn’t let the girls go if they were goin’ to a party. But if they were goin’ to a sangin’ [a singing in the community], their parents would let ’em go. We would get up there and there wasn’t no sangin’! She looked after us. We didn’t get in any trouble.”
Omie Gragg reminisced, “We enjoyed growing up and being teenagers. The boys and girls all got out and entertained each other together. They didn’t go off two and two; they stayed in a crowd. We played ball and hide-and-go-se
ek.
“The first person I ever dated was Harley [her husband]. I’d say I was about fifteen years old. We went to school together. We didn’t go off nowhere or nothing. He’d come up to the house. We [were] just all like a family. When we dated, we’d date just like a family thing. We never did go off and do things by ourselves. People just didn’t do that. We just always got out, a crowd of us all together, and just entertained each other. Like y’all have a party, we just got together and had a good time. Maybe we would all eat at one home one day; maybe, the next Sunday, we would eat at another home. The children and adults in the community all shared alike.”
Winnie Lovell told us, “I spent a lot of time with my brothers and sister. We played football and baseball, and we used to slide on the pine hill. Our favorite thing to do was to slide down that hill. Those pine needles would get slick ’til you couldn’t even walk back up. Every Thanksgiving, if it wasn’t raining, we raked leaves. Everybody was in charge of their own little pile. We had to clean up our own area. If somebody left a leaf, one of us would say, ‘Oh, you left a leaf!’ We liked to play in them. I’d get a big pile and then somebody’d run and jump in it and scatter it, and I’d fuss. Sometimes I’d jump in their piles. That’s kids!”
Dorothy Kilby lightheartedly exclaimed, “I love for it to snow! The kids and I used to get on the hill and make us a homemade sled, get on there, and go through the hallway of the barn. We had some fun! I still love for it to snow. I might try it again sometime!”
STORIES
Remembering past adventures and retelling fictional tales is a fond pastime for the older generation. Vivid stories bring smiles and laughter to those who take the time to listen. The following stories are just a sampling of those shared by the generous people of Southern Appalachia.
Foxfire 11: Wild Plant Uses, Gardening, Wit, Wisdom, Recipes, Beekeeping, Toolmaking, Fishing, and More Affairs of Plain Living Page 6