Foxfire 9

by Foxfire Fund, Inc.

  These old mountains have lots of magic and the glowing things are just some of it.

  Article and photographs by Allison Adams, Kyle Conway, Greg Darnell, Hedy Davalos, AI Edwards, and Chet Welch.

  1 Harry T. and Rebecca T. Northen, Ingenious Kingdom (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970), p. 48.

  2 “mushroom,” Compton’s Pictured Encyclopedia (Chicago: F. E. Compton & Co., 1960).

  3 Sterling North, Rascal (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1963), pp. 15–16.

  4 Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Co., 1947), p. 310.

  5 “fox fire,” Merriam-Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, 1966, p. 900.

  6 Northen, p. 48.

  7 Harry J. Fuller and Donald D. Richie, General Botany (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967), pp. 168-69.

  8 “button,” Merriam-Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, 1966, p. 305.

  9 Robert M. Devlin, Plant Physiology (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1969), pp. 181-86. Phosphorescence and luminescence are described and explained in Chapter 11, “Light and Dark Reactions of Photosynthesis.” Within the chapter, reasons are given explaining how light is absorbed by plants, how it is transported, and what intermediates are involved, along with the reactions that accompany these processes.

  10 Arthur W. Greenstone, Leland G. Hollingworth, Frank X. Stutman, Concepts in Chemistry (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1966), p. 156.

  REMEDIES, HERB DOCTORS AND HEALERS

  Since the publication of The Foxfire Book with its list of home remedies we had collected to that date (pages 230-48), we have continued to add to the list. The additions, all from within a thirty-mile radius of our school, appear here accompanied by the names of those who contributed them. The list is sandwiched between two other relevant contributions to the topic.

  Preceding the list is a major article about Flora Youngblood whose father was an herb doctor and faith healer who lived in the Sautee-Nacoochee Valley only a few miles from here. Flora learned many of his cures, used most of them herself, and contributed extensively to the new list. This section, which features Flora as a person, is unique for showing the remedies themselves in the overall context of one healer’s life, and being used on a daily basis by a living human being. At the same time, Flora also shares with us a craft from which she derives additional pleasure—that of making honeysuckle baskets.

  Following the article about Flora and the list of remedies is an article about Doc Brabson, Aunt Arie’s doctor, and a legendary figure in the Macon County, North Carolina area. Doc Brabson, the grandfather of John Bulgin, a blacksmith we featured in Foxfire 5, represents the transition between home herbal healing and modern medicine—a doctor who rode horseback into the mountains to ease pain, whose feet sometimes froze to the stirrups of his saddle while he rode on winter nights from patient to patient, and who received produce and labor in return for his services far more often than he received cash—a fact eloquently attested to by his ledger, still owned by John Bulgin. Material from that ledger is reproduced in this third section, and it gives unshakable credence to the stories we have heard of doctors accepting goods for services.

  Concerning the remedies we have printed, a note of caution is appropriate: we have tested none of these remedies ourselves, and though we do not dispute their efficacy, we must warn that—due to the pressures of the interview situations, or tape noise and interference, or the failure of the human memory—essential ingredients or quantities may have been misunderstood or left out; and the names of ingredients such as plants, because they are frequently called by their common colloquial names around here, may be misleading.

  In addition, several of the plants advocated (yellow ladyslipper, for example) may be on endangered species lists.

  For the above reasons, we cannot advocate or stand behind the actual use of these remedies, and we do not encourage you to employ them. We present them here purely for their historical and cultural interest, not as viable alternatives to modern medicinal products.

  FLORA YOUNGBLOOD

  Our first visit with Flora Youngblood was in July of 1984. At the beginning of the summer, one of her daughters, Mamie Waycaster, wrote us about her mother’s knowledge of herb remedies. Mrs. Youngblood had acquired this information from her father, Henry Cantrell, who had been an herb doctor in Sautee, near Cleveland, Georgia, from the time he was a young man until his death long after Mrs. Youngblood was a grown woman. Some of the students working for Foxfire during the summer went to interview her at her home in Buford, Georgia, a small town about twenty-five miles north of Atlanta.

  That first trip was made with the intention of doing a story on the herb remedies, but we came back with a great deal more. As it turned out, Mrs. Youngblood not only knew of some remedies of which we had never heard, but she has talents in the honeysuckle basket-making field and also told us many amusing tales of her childhood. Unfortunately, she had no honeysuckle vines with which to make baskets that day. Therefore this fall several of us—Richard Edwards, Lori Gillespie, Allison Adams, and Cheryl Wall—traveled back to Buford for a second interview and brought along a big box of vines gathered by Cheryl and Steve West on the Foxfire property the day before.

  After almost two hours of driving and another round of “How much farther?” our destination came into view. We were in a rural area and the houses were set back from the road, each with a spacious yard. Mrs. Youngblood’s house was located on a one-lane dirt road used primarily by the members of her large family, many of whom live nearby. She has twelve children (eight daughters and four sons) and although none of them still lives with her, most have homes close by. She has about thirty-nine grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.

  She lives in a well-kept one-story red brick house sitting on a little hill. There is a small wooden shed in the backyard and the house is surrounded by tall trees and a lush green lawn. It was a warm, sunny day in early September and we arrived about midmorning while the grass was wet with dew.

  As we walked across the carport to the door, we were taken aback by seeing two large street bikes parked in there. They were quite a contrast to the smiling, small, grandmotherly woman standing behind them at the door. She explained to us that they belong to her sons who don’t have room to park them at the place where they live.

  Although she is small, Mrs. Youngblood is sturdily built. Her silver-gray hair was pulled into a bun at the base of her neck and held in place with two metal combs. She is fair-complexioned and was tanned from the summer’s outdoor work, needing no makeup to enhance her coloring. Her bright blue eyes sparkled behind the black horn-rimmed glasses she was wearing. Her cool summer dress with a pastel floral print added to the grandmotherly aura that surrounded her.

  PLATE 5 One of Mrs. Youngblood’s daughters, Reba Hunt, helps prepare the honeysuckle for a basket.

  She greeted us warmly and made us all feel very special, as if we were her own grandchildren coming to spend the day. She invited us in and we began setting up the tape recorder and positioning our cameras as we explained what was most needed in this second interview. She began preparing the honeysuckle vines in her living room, a small, comfortable room adjacent to the kitchen. There were a couch, several chairs and a coffee table there. The walls were covered with pictures of the Youngblood family. With all of us there, the small room was crowded, so we moved into the kitchen where she was ready to begin boiling the vines in a large pot on the stove. This was the first step in making the basket, which will be shown in detail in the article following.

  There was a table at either end of the kitchen: a linoleum-covered table near the sink and a larger dining table where we sat as she showed us how to make the basket. Knickknacks knitted by Mrs. Youngblood decorated the cabinets above the stove and kitchen counter opposite the kitchen table. Shelves laden with a variety of colorful home-canned foods and several kitchen appliances stood against the wall behind the dining table. The kitch
en, lighted by two ceiling fixtures, had the warm atmosphere of a favorite gathering place for family and friends.

  Mrs. Youngblood seemed slightly nervous at first (and so were we), but all of us soon relaxed and became engrossed in the conversation and basket weaving. The atmosphere was light and fun, and time went by quickly. We were all involved in drawing diagrams, making photographs and getting all our fingers into the weaving of the basket. Two of her daughters were there most of the time and they contributed much of the information we came after.

  As the morning stretched into lunchtime, we began to think about letting Mrs. Youngblood take a breather while we went to a nearby McDonald’s for french fries, hamburgers and Cokes. Mrs. Youngblood had other plans for our lunch. After helping to get the dishes and food onto the kitchen table which sits beneath a window overlooking the backyard populated by birds and squirrels, we filled ourselves with ham, gravy and biscuits, cheese biscuits, iced tea, and cake until we could barely get up out of our chairs!

  Even during lunch, we asked questions about Mrs. Youngblood’s early childhood and later life with her husband and children. Mrs. Youngblood is a robust and energetic woman, typical of what we think of as a mountain woman, one who carries about her an air of gentle pride for having grown up in the severity of harsh mountain winters with a lack of what we consider modern conveniences. Her smiles were quick and warming as she told us some tales that had us laughing and others that amazed us.

  She drew for us a diagram of the Cantrell family home located near Cleveland in Georgia’s northeast mountains. Since she had talked about the rag dolls she played with as a young girl, she drew us a pattern for those and told us how they were made. She had made “butterfly” dresses for her daughters when flour sacks came in pretty printed cloth, and she gave us that pattern to include in this story about her. Primarily, though, she showed us how to make lovely baskets of honeysuckle vines and we have included all those steps so that anyone interested can follow her directions. And her knowledge of herb remedies is impressive. We feel an obligation to preserve this material before it is lost forever because so few have been careful to remember and pass this information on.

  ALLISON ADAMS AND LORI GILLESPIE

  Interviews, photography, transcribing, editing and layout by Allison Adams, Richard Edwards, Al Edwards, Teresa Thurmond, Lori Gillespie, Chet Welch, Cheryl Wall, Kelly Shropshire, and Joseph Fowler. Special thanks to Oh Soon Shropshire for drawing the basket diagrams.

  I was born the thirty-first of January, nineteen and six. I was raised up in [White County, Georgia] and was the seventh child out of nine. My father was Henry Cantrell. He was pretty big, kinda stocky-built, medium height. He was just quiet and calm, never got mad or angry about anything. He was just as calm as he could be. I never saw him get ’ary a bit fluster-rated. He was fond of his kids. I mean he was! Any children! I never heard him ever raise his voice to us kids, even after he’d taken down with arthritis and wasn’t able to do anything.

  He was the baby of his family. There were sixteen children in all and he was youngest. His family farmed for a living and raised everything they ate, but he always was interested in remedies. There was an Indian chief who lived in the same neighborhood that [my daddy’s family] did, near Cleveland, Georgia, in White County. He would come out and talk with my daddy a lot in their young days. That got him interested and wanting to know about [the Indians’ remedies].

  Back then, you know, there wasn’t many doctors. People just sort of doctored themselves, so his parents were really interested in my daddy learning this stuff. His family wanted him to go [stay with the Cherokees] to learn about their remedies. He was the only [member of his family] that wanted to learn, so they let him. The rest of ’em didn’t want to, so he just went and joined their tribe near Robbinsville, North Carolina, when he was twenty-one years old. He learned all their remedies from them. That’s the reason he went over there, but [while he lived with them] he would do whatever the Indians were doing [to earn his keep]. He stayed with them for ten years and then he came back home.

  He started gold mining and started his family then [when he was thirty-one]. A lot of people digged [for gold] back in them days and he was just raised up with it. He gold-mined near Hiawassee and in Gilmer County, all back in there. Lawd! He was a real gold miner! [laughter] He could tell [where there was gold] by the color of the sand and the little rocks. He’d say, “Now at the end of this, there’s gold,” and they’d start following the little trail [or vein]. They’d dig tunnels or channels where they saw the vein, start turning under, following that little vein with picks and shovels. If they ever found a ledge or rock, they’d take that pick and go through that rock because that was where the most gold was. Then they’d trench their water into little troughs. They had pans and they’d dip those pans in [that water] and turn them every which way and let the water run through them. That way, the gold would stay in the bottom [of the pan] while all the other stuff would run out. [My mama still had the pans but I don’t know what she did with ’em.]

  They’d heat [the gold] to get all the black dirt off of it. Then they’d sell it by the ounce. Just an ounce of gold would bring a lot of money. Them gold nuggets really brought in a lot of money!

  He would [plant his crops and tend them] get that done. Then [while they were growing] him and his brothers and some of their neighbors would gold-mine together. When it come time to gather [the crops], why then he’d come back to the fields and get them all in and go back to gold mining.

  In the winter months, he’d gold-mine a lot. He was a real gold miner back in his young days! That’s what gave him the arthritis—exposure in the creeks and everything. He panned gold and he would come in in the wintertime so wet and freezing to death!

  He took down sick when I was small, so I never got to go [to the gold mines] with him. I’ve been to the gold mines after he got to where he wasn’t able to go. I saw where they had worked, but when I was there, there wasn’t anybody working. I don’t know why they all quit gold mining back up in there. My sister can remember him having some gold nuggets when he first got down sick. She can remember playing with them [laughter], but he finally sold them all.

  [When he could no longer gold-mine because he was so crippled up with arthritis, he still did herb doctoring. He would ride around in an oxcart that my brothers built for him.] It was made by taking the two front wheels and the axle from a regular one-horse farm wagon, and adding a little bed [about three feet long and just wide enough for two people to sit side by side]. Instead of the wagon tongue, they put shafts on each side of the wagon and put a steer between these to pull the cart.

  They fixed the cart where it would lean down and Daddy would sit down on it [facing backwards] and then they’d take a stick and raise [the cart] back up and lock it [in place]. That would fasten [the cart level] to where he could sit right.

  [One of my brothers] would just get up in the front and drive it like a horse-drawn wagon. One of us little ones would sit down by my daddy in the back. They’d [usually] send me with him because I was the size that he needed to go with him and I’d take care of his crutches for him. When he’d get [ready to get out], the big boys would let the cart down with the lever and he’d stand up. He couldn’t use his arms much, so I’d stick his crutches under his arms and walk along with him.

  He’d go squirrel-hunting like that. He’d tell me to [get down from the cart] and go around the tree and chase the squirrel to where he could shoot it. I’d go ’round behind the tree and make a fuss and the squirrel would run around [toward him] and he’d shoot it. The older ones would dress [the squirrels he shot] and put the hides on a board and sell them things. My mama would make squirrel dumplings. My daddy loved squirrel dumplings!

  He possum-hunted a lot, too. I wouldn’t eat the possum but the rest [of the family] liked ’em. They’d dry out the possum skins and sell them too.

  We’d go back up in the mountains in that oxcart. He’d say, “All right, get that ma
yapple. There’s some mayapple.” I’d hop off the oxcart and dig it up for him with a little shovel or a little ol’ mallet, whichever one he’d have in his hand. I’d have to gather the whole plant, usually, but for some he’d just use roots—blackberry, for instance.

  We’d trim off the dead leaves and any that wasn’t good and alive. We’d wash ’em real clean to where there wouldn’t be a bit of grit on ’em nowhere. Then we’d trim ’em and fix ’em. He’d take the leaves and make different things out of them and he’d make other stuff out of the roots.

  He’d take the roots while they were fresh and beat them up and make little poultices for sores. It’d draw that infection out and the sore’d heal right up. [Usually, he prescribed medicines to be applied] externally as poultices.

  He also dried a lot of his stuff. [To powder up the roots and leaves,] we’d stick ’em in a pan and put ’em in the stove to dry. Then we’d put ’em in a cloth and beat ’em with a hammer, just like you were beating up pickling spices to put up pickles. I’ve powdered for a half day at a time, [laughter] After we had it powdered up, he’d put it in little bottles and he’d keep all his stuff in a certain cabinet. He had a chart on his cabinet and all the bottles were numbered. Now if he [knew his patient] had this certain kind of disease or illness, he had a number [he’d go to]. When people came, they mightn’t know what was the matter with them. He’d diagnose what they had and then he’d get the herbs that went with that disease and dose ’em up. He’d know how much to give and he’d take a little spoon and [dip that much out of one of his bottles]. He’d give them the powder and tell them how much to put in a glass and how much water to pour over it to make the tea. They were supposed to let the tea sit so long, then strain it and drink it.