“I was going down the railroad one night, and there was an old store that set down below the road, a big old store,” recalled Kimsey Hampton. “The windows were all broke out of it, and there was nothing in it. There was a screech owl flew up on the railing right in front of me, and I just tried to pick it up. It would fly on down the road five or six feet in front of me, and I just kept trying to pick it up, and every time I would bend over to get it, it would fly a little further. It flew off the railroad down in that old store. I went down there, and it was setting in the window, and I tried to catch it. It flew inside that old store onto one of the counters. I walked in the door. The moon was shining in one of the windows. It was setting on the counter, and I just decided I was gonna catch it. When I reached to get it, it went to crying just like a baby. You talk about somebody getting out of there in high gear! Brother, I got out of there. As far as I know, that owl is still there.
“One time up in North Carolina, a feller by the name of Rube Mull had a old shepherd dog, and you could throw a stick in the creek, and that old dog’d jump in, get it, swim back out with it, and lay it down right at your feet. So Rube and another feller went one time to dynamite the creek and get ’em some fish. The old dog tagged along behind, and they didn’t know he was with ’em. Rube got his dynamite fixed and put the fuse in it and lit it and throwed it out in the creek. Just about the time the dynamite hit the creek, the old shepherd dog jumped in. Went and got that stick of ol’dynamite, come swimmin’ back to Rube, an’ Rube started runnin’ out through an old broomsage field, and that old shepherd dog right behind him. He’d look back over his shoulder every once in a while an’ say, ‘Lay it down, Shep, lay it down!’
“After a while, the stick of ol’dynamite went off, and the ol’ dog went up about two foot high and just flew all to pieces. The feller asked Rube, ‘Why didn’t you climb a bush an’ get out of his way?’
“Rube said, I did think about it, and I was ‘fraid the dog’d lay the dynamite down at the foot of a bush and blow us all up!’”
Another vital part of Southern Appalachian storytelling is the Jack Tale. Jack Tales are fictional stories, told to entertain and occasionally teach a lesson, about a cantankerous fellow named Jack.
Pat Cotter uses Jack Tales to bring the pumpkins he carves to life. He states, “This is a Jack Tale that my grandfather told me about how the jack-o’-lantern got its name:
PLATE 30 Pat Cotter with his wife, Lonna
“There was an old Irish farmer who lived pretty close to him, and he was very, very mean. He didn’t go to church on Sunday. He didn’t go to PTA meetings. He didn’t pay his paperboy. He was just all in all a bad character. He did have one attribute that made him famous in East Tennessee. He grew some of the best apples in the state. On his farm there, he had fine apple trees, and he grew the best, biggest, and sweetest apples in the state. Even the governor would come in and buy his apples. They were just great.
“The devil heard about Jack’s apples. It don’t happen so often now, but the devil used to drop in and see people every now and then. So the devil dropped in at Jack’s house one day and said, Jack, I hear you’ve got the best apples in the state.’
“And Jack said, I have. I’ve probably got the best apples in the eastern United States.’
“And the devil said, ‘Well, I’d like to have some of ’em.’
“And Jack said, ‘Well, you’ll have to go to the very back part of my farm on the highest hill, in the tallest tree on the very top limb. That’s where you’ll find the sweetest apples.’
“So the devil said, ‘Well, I think I’ll go get some of ’em.’
“So he left and started to the apple tree. Jack followed him with a hatchet. And the devil clumb to the top limb. He set down, picked an apple, and sure enough, it was the sweetest, best-tasting apple he’d ever eaten. While he was up there partaking of the apples, Jack took his hatchet and carved a cross on the bottom of the apple tree. I don’t know if you know about devils and crosses, but the devil couldn’t get by the cross, because it was on the tree trunk. So he was stuck up there for something like forty-three years. He couldn’t get down, and, of course, he was hopping mad all this time.
“Well, Jack eventually died of meanness and old age.
“His first stop was heaven and St. Peter said, ‘You’ve been so mean and bad, you can’t stay here.’ He said, ‘You’ll have to go to hell.’
“When Jack died, the spell was broken, so the devil came down out of the apple tree and had to walk all the way back to hell. He was mad and thirsty. He’d been up there for a long time with nothing to drink. He and Jack got to hell about the same time, and they had an awful fight. The devil was mad, and he was ripped, and Jack was ripped because he’d gotten kicked out of heaven. The devil said, ‘You can’t stay here in hell, after what you’ve done to me.’
“And Jack said, ‘I’ve got to. I hadn’t got any other place to go.’
“And the devil said, ‘No, you can’t,’ and they fought some more.
“The devil gets the best of a lot of us from time to time, you know. Well, the devil started getting the best of Jack, and Jack lit out running. The devil hadn’t had enough, so he picked up a hot coal out of hell and flung it at Jack. It come bouncing along, and Jack saw it, and he said, ‘You know, I’ve been condemned to wander through eternity in darkness. I can’t go to heaven, and I can’t go to hell; I might be able to use that coal.’ He started to reach down and pick it up to use it for a light, and he realized it was hot, so he looked over in a field and sure enough, there was a pumpkin. He took his pocketknife out, and he hollowed out the pumpkin, cut a hole in it, and put the hot coal in there. Halloween night now, you can still see him going up through Union County and some of the other places with his light. That’s how my grandfather told me the jack-o’-lantern got its name.”
WISDOM AND VALUABLE
LESSONS LEARNED
Age often claims many things. Skin wrinkles, eyes dim, and steps slow. While age takes away many obvious things, it gives one valuable gift: wisdom. Lessons are learned through hardships. These people have certainly seen their share and are stronger in body, better in heart, and wiser in mind because of them. Wisdom is the gem given in the eve of life. In the following passages, several people share their pearls with us.
“We didn’t have a lot of fancy things, but we had all the necessaries,” Clive Smith stated. “I’ve had a good life. I’ll soon be seventy-one years old. I still live near the house that I was born in, and I sincerely hope that I never have to go north of Clayton or south of Tallulah Falls again in my life. There’s nothing out there that I want.”
Dorothy Kilby reminisced, “My marriage to Delo Kilby has been a challenge, to say the least. A lot of hard work, but we were both young, and we learned to do things together. We had to learn to get along together and how to make it work. One didn’t always get their way; neither did the other one. It was fun, and at times it was hard.
“When we were first married, we didn’t have things that newlyweds have today. That didn’t bother us. We had each other, and as long as we had each other, we could make anything work.
PLATE 31 “My life has been complete, and I’m happy with what I got, and I’m blessed.”—Dorothy Kilby
“I think that I am fairly self-sufficient. I can do just about anything. I can do things that a lot of women have never done. As I get older, I might not be able to do them, but right now I figure I can do just about anything to survive.
“I can’t think of anything that I would have liked to have changed about my life. My life has been complete, and I’m happy with what I got, and I’m blessed. I wouldn’t change anything. I’m not rich as far as moneywise, but Delo and I have everything I reckon we need. We’ve our children, our grandchildren; we have each other, so I guess we are contented and happy and hope to live a long life together.”
Ernest J. Henning recalled, “It was a good life, but, on the other hand, it was a hard life. We all h
ad chores and work to do, but we all got together and enjoyed ourselves on the weekend. We had the old parties with a fiddle and guitar. That’s the way life was. It was simple but good.
“The thing about it was everybody trusted each other. There was never any stealing going on or things like that. If one of your neighbors got sick, the neighbors took his farm on and worked it just like part of the family. In fact, the whole neighborhood was one big family. We all looked after each other, which, in a way, was good.”
Omie Gragg said, “We had very little trouble [raising our children]. We didn’t have to sit and worry where the children were at, what they were doing, and never worried about them getting into any kind of trouble. Back then you just didn’t worry. The children in the community would get out there and play sort of like you guys get out there and play ball now. Everybody had a good time. There weren’t any bad kids. There wasn’t any trouble. They didn’t fuss. They didn’t fight. Everybody shared with each other. Whatever they had, they shared with each other. It was a good life to live. It was hard, but it was good.”
CHANGING TIMES
Time has brought many changes to the Southern Appalachian region. Some of these changes are considered improvements, while others are thought of as hindrances. Many of the changes noted are in the relationships between people.
“People were more honest back then,” M. S. York declared. “They didn’t work on Sunday either when I was growing up unless the ox fell in the ditch, and they had to pull it out. You didn’t hear any weed eaters. Of course they didn’t have ’em back then, but people wouldn’t do that sort of thing on Sunday. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about cooking their Sunday dinner on Saturday. They wouldn’t even cook on Sunday. I heard some of the old people talk about it. People worked hard back then. With all the things they had to do, they had to work harder than they do now. Everything was manual labor. They didn’t have no machinery. People don’t do like they used to. They used to help one another.”
Dorothy Kilby said, “The differences in kids these days is that they don’t have any responsibility. They don’t seem to have as many chores to do like I had. Nowadays they have a lot of free time on their hands. They go places where we didn’t get to go. We never went anywhere, and when it came dark, you went to bed. When it got daylight, you got up; you did your chores before you went to school. The kids nowadays just don’t have that responsibility. They don’t have the chores to do, so they have a lot of free time to do whatever they want to do.”
Esco Pitts told us, “I believe people lived closer to the Lord then than they do now, simply because there wasn’t so many distractions to get your mind. [There’re] so many things to occupy your mind this day in time. You see, back yonder, if a family in the community couldn’t cultivate the crop, why, the people in the community would gather in and take care of their crops. Or if it was in the wintertime when there was cold [weather], and they didn’t have wood to keep warm, people in the community’d go and cut and pile wood on their porch where they could get it.
“Times are just changed. People just don’t do that anymore. Back yonder when I was young, our neighbors would come in on Saturday and spend the night. Next day all would get in a wagon and go to church. But this day in time, they don’t do that. They visited their neighbors in those days.
“People live faster this day in time. They don’t have time for anybody but themselves. People used to have time for anything they wanted to do. It seemed they had more time than they do today. Of course, we have the same amount of time. But today they just have so many things on their minds—so many things to look after and to do and to think about—until they don’t have time for their neighbor. A lot of them don’t even have time to go to church.
“Back yonder you never saw anybody working on Sunday. If you did see a person working on Sunday, people in the community were astonished about it. But the way things are today, there’s people that just have to work on Sunday because there’s so many others that depend on what he’s a-doing—for whatever he produces. If he’s running the store or a gasoline station or whatever, there’s so many that demand his service that he has to work. Especially the filling station has to [be open] on Sunday because that’s when people are out joyriding. They’re bumper-to-bumper out on the highway, and they’ve got to have gas to run on.”
Clive Smith said, “The biggest changes here [in the Wolf Creek community] are the roads, and the improvement of the fields and farming areas. We used to have red clay roads. Many times, the [school] bus would get stuck, and we’d have to walk on to school. That was long before the road was even graveled.
“Electricity and telephones made a big difference [too]. Back then, we had to draw water from about an eighty-foot-deep well. We’d draw up a two-gallon bucketful at a time. You’d just have to keep repeating that to get the amount of water you was gonna need.
“Back then you didn’t consider going to Clayton just for some minor object. You had to need something before you’d start planning the trip.
PLATE 32 “I think people were happier then than they are now. They appreciated what they did get.”—Belle Dryman
“We don’t have to cut wood and build fires [now either]. There’s a lot of people that still heat with wood, but it’s because they want to more than anything else. I like the wood heat and [the woodstove] cooking, myself. It just seems better.”
Belle Dryman stated, “Most people now has got jobs, and they don’t help out like they did back then. And people don’t go see the sick like they use t’ either. They don’t have time, I reckon.
“People used to stay at home and work. Made what they had, and done without what they didn’t make.
“Well, if people would raise them something to eat, they wouldn’t need as much money. People have to have some kind of work to live. Country people have to work to keep the city people something to eat. And in the country, well, people can get fresh air. People can get out and walk places. People used to walk places, and I believe they were healthier. I don’t believe people gets enough exercise. I think people were happier then than they are now. They appreciated what they did get.”
Claude Darnell said, “People used to go see one another, and they didn’t have no way to go but walk or ride a horse. Now they’re livin’ a lot faster than we did back then. Nowadays they ain’t got no time to go see anybody. They’re going all the time, and they don’t go nowhere either.”
Roberta Hicks shared, “Most people these days have to work harder for the modern things that are wanted and do not really have time to spend with their children.”
PLATE 33 “It is a much more convenient world now, but on the other hand, the world seemed to have had much more time then than it does now.”—Hazel Killebrew
Hazel Killebrew believes, “Life today is a lot different than when I was a child. It is much easier in some ways. Living was hard back then. We didn’t have washing machines or electric stoves or those kind of things. It is a much more convenient world now, but on the other hand, the world seemed to have had much more time then than it does now.”
Jesse Ray Owens stated, “The new ways is easiest, but I wouldn’t say they’re the best. Well, I know the young people were happier back then because they would always play outside instead of in the house watching TV We were raised in the mountains. I’d say we always had a great time, especially on Saturdays and Sundays when we didn’t have to work.
“I seen the old-time way, and that’s the way I was brought up. I never did see any modern methods ’til I went into service [the U.S. Armed Forces]. I didn’t know what the outside world was about. We was living from day to day and happy. We wasn’t hungry I reckon that was what life was about. It would be nice if it was that simple again, because it was a simple life.”
GARDENS AND COMMERCIAL FARMS
“I like to see anything grow.”
Today, most people plant gardens for one basic reason: they want to. Planting and harvesting is a choice they make, not so
mething necessary for their survival. Many people, however, can still remember a time when having a garden was one of the few ways a family could get fruits and vegetables, which they canned and preserved to help them survive the winter.
Not too long ago, families in Southern Appalachia had few options for making a living, and money was scarce no matter what they chose to do. Even if money had been plentiful, it would have mattered little, as stores did not ship in produce from other parts of the country or world as they do today. In order to have food, families had to grow nearly all of their fruits and vegetables on their own farms.
Adding to the precariousness of the situation was that the success of the family’s crops depended not only on their abilities as gardeners but also on factors beyond the farmers’ control like the weather, the amount of rainfall, and the abundance or lack of pests. It is no wonder, then, that many families religiously followed superstitions when conducting the everyday affairs of farm life.
The self-sufficiency and independence that people developed from having to produce nearly all of their own food is still an important characteristic of Appalachian life and culture. However, the mountaineers who grew up knowing they had to produce their own food also grew up knowing how important their community was. There was no question, therefore, about what to do when a neighbor became ill or when his crops failed. Everyone in the community simply came together to help him, knowing the same would be done for them should they ever face a time of severe misfortune or need.
Many common aspects of life in those days seem so unreal to us that they are almost like legend now: watching the [zodiac] signs to know when to plant; inspecting the harvest to find the best plants to save for seed; gathering with others to shuck, string, or thrash the harvested plants; and traveling, by covered wagon, to the market to peddle the excess.
Foxfire 11: Wild Plant Uses, Gardening, Wit, Wisdom, Recipes, Beekeeping, Toolmaking, Fishing, and More Affairs of Plain Living Page 7