Connie reminisced, “I was born the thirtieth of March 1942 in central Kentucky on a farm near a little town called Lawrenceburg. It was a rural community, and I lived there until I was about eight years old. [Then] my daddy went into the grocery business, and we moved to town. I more or less turned into a city slicker. I was actually raised up in a small town, but all my kinfolks and the customers of the store were rural people.
PLATE 117 Connie Carlton working on a pitchfork with his shaving horse and drawknife
“I’ve always liked older people and related to them more. I’d set around and listen to their stories and tales, and they’d show me things. I guess that’s the way my interest really started growing. I tell people I was born probably two hundred years too late. It’s always been in my ancestral blood to be self-surviving with the bare necessities. I’ve probably got the reputation of being the youngest old-timer around. I can see and understand so much of your old ways. I think your heritage is as much a part of you as anything else. It’s something that should be carried on and preserved in some way for the next generation.
“My wife’s name is Judy, and I think she’s the best lady in the world. She’s stood behind me and given me a lot of encouragement. She’s just an old country gal [who] was raised on a farm, and she likes the same things that I like. She’s taught school for about twenty years now, and that’s what she does. [We] have two boys and a girl. My girl will work with her hands some, but my boys don’t have the interest.
“I’ve had a mixed-up profession. I barbered for thirty years, farmed, and done some carpentry work and crafts.
“I really got started [making tools] around 1982. I was deer hunting [with some friends], and we were killing some time one night. I went by a bookstore and picked up Roy Underhill’s book. [Roy Underhill hosts The Woodwrights Shop on PBS and has authored numerous books.] It gives a general step-by-step method [for toolmaking]. That’s what got me started. After I got interested, [I would read] any books I could find. I’ve got books piled up, and some of them are just wore to a frazzle. I’ve had some re-bound. I might want to see how to do just one thing or what they said about it, and I can look at a picture and get a general idea of how it was made and the size of it.
“I got interested in learning these crafts, and I learned the majority of them through research, reading books, and picking up a few pointers here and there from old-timers. I don’t know where the spark started. Anything old, pure, and simple will catch my eye. I just see beauty in things like that. I love the simplicity of the finished product. It’s got a lot of purpose and usefulness. I get more satisfaction from going out and cutting the tree, taking a few simple hand tools, and constructing something that’s practical and beautiful, than from having a shop full of modern tools and making a refined piece of furniture. I don’t see as much beauty and craftsmanship in that for the amount of effort [that is expended]. You really have to have a love for it or you wouldn’t endure through trial and error. I could make a pitchfork and it break and as long as I can see what caused it to break, I’m learning from that. I’ve got all the patience in the world there, but when I go to change a spark plug in a lawn mower and get the threads crossed, I’m ready to get the sledgehammer. It’s just different interests for different people. I get as much satisfaction and enjoyment out of someone appreciating and admiring my work, probably as much or more so than [their] actually buying it.
“[Carving] kind of grows on you. When you start out, you try to make [your piece] look like [the model you are using]. Then, as you get older and [begin to understand] the reasoning behind everything, you start learning what each wood would do and what you could do with a tool. When I’m shaving a piece of wood on the shaving horse with the drawknife, and I hit the in-grain [where] that wood starts wanting to tear, I just stop automatically. It’s just second nature with you. All you’ve got to do is turn your wood around [in the] opposite direction. I think any craftsman will tell you this, you can learn the basics on anything you want to learn, but it’s all the little things that you pick up on your own that you get a feel for. I tell folks sometimes the way that I have a feel for wood is just like crawling right up inside of the log. You’ve got to have control over everything as it comes together: the wood, the tools, and the shaping. There are things that just come to you. You just don’t learn them overnight.
“Anytime that I go to a museum and see a unique piece that was practical and popular in use, I copy it. I make the wooden pitchforks all the way from two tines to five tines. I make various types of wooden rakes, bow rakes, and split-style rakes that have split handles [with tines] that fork out. I make ox yokes, wooden shovels, and meal paddles. I have a little tool that I make; we call them cane strippers back home. They’re just a little notched stick that you can walk through a field of sorghum with and knock the leaves off before you cut it. I [also] make dough bowls and spoons. I tried baskets a little bit, but baskets kind of run with the lawn mower. My patience don’t hold out.
“The crafts that I make have been a good part of my livelihood for the past eight years. The biggest problem that I have is the love that you have for it. There’s so much of it that you want to do, and you can’t do it all and be accomplished and end up making it right. You don’t know how hard it is to control that. When you get to thinking about the amount of pieces and the amount of money, you may as well just have a nine-to-five job, because that’s what it’s gonna run into. You’ve got to keep it balanced where you’ll keep that love for it. You’ve got to put yourself into every piece you make. That’s the way I try to do with these pieces. I don’t just say, ‘Well, I’ve got to hurry up and get this one done so I can get to this next one.’ I can’t do that and enjoy it.
PLATE 118 Several of Connie’s handmade farm tools
“I start right from the tree with most of the work I do. I pick my cut, cut the tree, split it, and rive [split] it out. I use very little sawed lumber. A lot of times, I’ll just buy the beam of an ox yoke or something like that. [All] my farm tools are carved and shaped on a shaving horse, which is nothing more than a vise or bench you set down on to hold your wood.
“[To make a pitchfork,] the first thing I would do is go out in the woods and select a good tree. I would either use ash, white or red oak, or hickory, because these woods all rive and work good with hand tools, and they have a lot of strength about them. You can bend the wood without it breaking. I would select a log [that is] maybe twelve to fifteen inches in diameter. You’ve got to select a tree that’s almost of a veneer quality [no knots or protrusions]. You’ve got to be able to read that tree [while it’s] standing. By reading it, you can look at the bark of the tree, and it’ll tell you a whole lot. Where it’s growing will [also] tell you a whole lot. [If] you can see a scar on the tree where a limb has been, there’s gonna be a knot there. You don’t want that. You want that clear wood. [Once] I have selected my tree, I’ll cut off a six-foot section and take a wedge and sledgehammer, and half the log. Then I’ll fourth it. Then I’ll eighth it, load it in my truck, and take it to the house.
“I don’t have to worry about hauling it to the sawmill or anything like that. I’ll take one of these one-eighth sections, which will look pie-shaped, and I’ll knock the very inner heartwood out. I’ll put this in a break. [A break] is just a forked limb that’s elevated where you can stick the wood through it to hold it. [Then] take your froe and mallet, rive this wood, apply pressure to it, and split it out the way you want it. I’ll get a piece of wood down small enough for a pitchfork blank [a piece of wood a pattern is drawn on] and then I’ll take my shaving horse and, with the drawknife, smooth up one side of it and draw my pattern of the pitchfork. Then I’ll take the hewing hatchet and cut almost down to the line. I can cut that out in the rough with the hatchet to get the bulk of the wood off. Then I’ll set down on the shaving horse again, and, with my drawknife, I will cut this out right down to the exact shape, relieve the end where the tines are at, and bend them. After this, I will
separate the tines where your prongs come out, and then I steam the wood.
“My steaming box is very crude. It’s nothing more than four boards about one by eight, six feet long, nailed together and made [into] a long, rectangle-shaped box. Both ends are open, and I set this box up about two feet off the ground. I have a camp stove, and I heat water underneath [the box with] it. I’ve got a hole cut in the bottom that I pipe steam up into my box with. I put whatever I’m steaming in the box and stop up both ends. The heat and the moisture is what relaxes the wood enough to make it bend. You can oversteam or not steam enough. It’s kind of like cooking. You’ve got to kind of get a knack for it.
“Then I bend the piece in a jig and that gives it its shape. You let it set in there for two to three weeks. Then you can take it out, go back over it with a spokeshave to smooth it up, and put your spreader rods in. I tell everyone that you can make a pitchfork in two and a half or three hours spread out over a month, on account of the different stages you go through. I enjoy going to craft shows and making pitchforks. I can show them all the different stages where they can actually see where it gets into being a pitchfork. It seems like a lot of people appreciate that.
“With our ancestors, whatever you were making determined the types of wood used, because your woods have [different] characteristics. Some wood is real springy and elastic like hickory, white oak, and ash. Those are the main woods I use. If you’re using the same tools that they used back then, and you go about making pieces the way they made them, a lot of times it’ll tell you what type of wood to use. It’s always got a purpose. Your buckeye and your poplar were your main woods in dough bowls. It was soft and easy working, yet durable. Most of your pitchforks were made of hickory, ash, and oak. Ox yokes [are made from] poplar, sassafras, and ash, because they were strong enough, yet they were light in weight. Your woods always have a purpose or reason behind using them. That’s the way I see it, and I think that’s the way our ancestors saw it.
“Knowing that the majority of my things are just gonna be hung up on the wall to look at, I [still] try to make everything as original as I can. If you actually wanted to use my forks and rakes, you could. My wife says that’s too much trouble. I’m too much of a purist. If something looks good on the outside, but is not functional all the way through, I don’t have a good feeling about it.
“If a person took pride in his tools, he’d keep them in first-class shape. I use an oil finish on all of my work. I mix linseed oil and turpentine. Sometimes I put varnish with this. A lot of times, you’ll find a pitchfork with black-looking stuff on it. That was pine resin that they would melt over the bends of the pitchfork to waterproof it. If you keep a pitchfork in the dry, it’s gonna hold its shape good. If it’s set out in the weather, it’s gonna gradually straighten back out a whole lot, because wood has a memory.
“Once or twice a year, just rub it down with linseed oil, let it soak in, and wipe the excess off. Actually, using a piece will make it more beautiful than just buying it and hanging it up on the wall, because you put the patina in it. The aging of the wood shows the wear from use. If you could find two original antique pieces that were just alike, [except] one of them was put up and never used and [the other] one was used, the one that was used would be more beautiful, to me, than the other one.
“[My tools consist of] a drawknife, a spokeshave, a froe, a mallet, a maul, wedges, wooden gluts made out of dogwood or locust, axes, and hatchets. I use a hewing hatchet a whole lot. It’s made just like your broadax, only it’s in a hatchet form. I buy some of my tools, and I make a lot of them. You’ll run across them at flea markets and auctions. Tools are getting harder to find, and if you find one, it’s in such shape that you can’t make it functional. I make bow saws, and I have blacksmith friends who reproduce some old tools that I can’t buy nowhere. I tell everyone that everything I make is done by hand and with hand tools, except the chainsaw that I cut the tree down with. That’s really about the only way you can make them, and make them as genuine as you can.
“Sometimes I have trouble in bending the wood. One of the biggest things that I had trouble with, in making a pitchfork, was getting a good proportional shape. There’s so much that you’ve got to do in the few minutes that you’re bending that fork. I can make ten pitchforks, and you’ll see a difference in all ten of them. That goes with any handmade piece. No two pieces ever turn out alike. But in my work I never let it bother me. I broke a pitchfork when it was 90 percent done. When I was driving the spreader rods, the little dowels that separate the tines, it caught in the wood somehow and snapped just like you [had] hit it with a hatchet. But I don’t let things like that bother me. It’s just like getting knocked down. Just get back up and try again. I’ve basically learned the trade through trial and error and having enough love to want to seek it further.
“A lot of the enjoyment I get is from going out and finding the tree. I can go out sometimes and look a half a day and never find a tree to suit me. At other [times] I can go out and find one in a half an hour and make twenty-five pitchforks. When I find a tree, it almost makes my mouth water, just waiting to get into it and see how it’s gonna work. There’s nothing like working a good piece of wood.
“I went out and cut a hickory tree to make my bows for the ox yoke I made. Generally, after I get the bows cut out, I take a metal strip, reinforce it, steam it, and bend it around a jig. I use this metal stripping and the steaming to relax the wood and the metal bands to reinforce and keep it from splintering.
“If you’re a traditional craftsman, where you make everything by hand, you’re gonna be limited for production and shows. I’m about one hundred and eighty miles from home [Lawrenceburg, Kentucky] right now. I’ve been to Kingsport, Tennessee, and down around the Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky. That’s about as far as I’ve gone. The Museum [of Appalachia in Norris, Tennessee] is a good show. You meet so many fellow craftsmen that you almost become a family. People down here in Tennessee have welcomed me and my wife. People like Bill Henry and Jesse Butcher have done a lot to promote me, encourage me, and give me a lot of confidence. It’s just an enjoyment. It’s work to a point, but there’s more enjoyment than work.
“The most fun thing of all in my type of work is finding a unique object, like a different-shaped pitchfork or something, and making that for the very first time. It’s been a hard road mastering this, but I wouldn’t have it no other way—I still think the best things in life are free, and I don’t think you can beat the beauty in simplicity. That’s not with just making things, but that’s in living too. If you could make yourself satisfied with that, I think in the long run, you can get a lot more enjoyment out of life.”
FARM ANIMALS
“There’s not a mule on the hill now.”
People in the early 1900s depended on animals. Animals were used for transportation, food, work, and sometimes a sort of money. Farm animals were part of everyday life. Ernest J. Henning recalled, “I had chores that involved animals. We worked with the animals, fed them, and milked the cows. I had three sisters and a brother. Each of us had our own chores to do. I helped my daddy with the cutting of wood and all the farm chores, like feeding the animals.”
Gertrude Keener also remembers having many animals at her home. “The year that I was married, we raised our own meat, had our own cattle, and fattened our own hogs. We had two cows to start and had our own milk and butter. We built us a chicken house down here and raised hatching eggs and pullets and sold eggs. We lived hard back then.”
Animals helped generations in the past to be self-sufficient. They carried the owners where they needed to go, plowed the garden that produced the food, and sometimes even became the food. Because of the self-sufficient nature of the people, the only reasons to leave the farm were to attend school and church and to buy the few items that could not be raised or made on the farm. This helped previous generations to become a closer family.
Everyone from small children to adults was involved in some way wi
th the animals. Fathers taught sons and daughters how to work with, feed, and tend the animals. This training prepared the children for the future. June Jones told us, “The old man used to put me in the box on the plow stock when I couldn’t even walk and keep up. I followed him night and day. I’ve tinkered with steers all my life.”
While we depend on our cars, trucks, and jobs today, importance was placed on the health and care of the animals in the past. Just as we make sure our cars will run and get us where we need to go now, so the people of the past made sure their animals were in good health. If the animals were to get sick, then that resulted in a loss of food and income for the family. As Ernest J. Henning said, “We took care of the animals like they were a part of the family. We took as much care of the animals as we did each other.”
The general care of animals was covered in Foxfire 3. This chapter is meant to show how important animals were in all aspects of everyday life.
—Amy S. York
HORSES
Conway Watkins has been working with horses most of his life, and he shared some of his stories with us. “My mother drove a horse to the store. She couldn’t back him up. He wouldn’t stop. He was a big red horse Daddy had when I was growing up. He was a good workhorse as long as you didn’t back him up. He was a good buggy horse and plow horse. We didn’t give him a chance to back into much. We knowed what he would do if we backed him up, so we just turned in a circle all of the time. Clayton had dirt streets and plank sidewalks when we had that horse. We were always afraid that if we backed him up, he would back up over the sidewalk and break all the glass in the store.
Foxfire 11: Wild Plant Uses, Gardening, Wit, Wisdom, Recipes, Beekeeping, Toolmaking, Fishing, and More Affairs of Plain Living Page 23