ILLUSTRATION 82 Kenny with one of his newest creations: a redheaded woodpecker door knocker. Pull the cord and the bird pecks.
ILLUSTRATION 83 Dave Pickett makes his furniture puzzle by first cutting around three sides of the original block to make the large table.
ILLUSTRATION 84 The sixth cut yields a small table from be tween the legs of one of the large chairs.
ILLUSTRATION 85 In less than a minute, all the necessary cuts are made. Here, John Helms looks at the disassembled puzzle, all pieces of which came from one block of wood.
ILLUSTRATION 86
Rattletrap
Stanley Hicks remembers having these noisemakers as a youngster. A white-oak split snapping against a handcarved cog wheel as the box spins around the handle causes the racket.
ILLUSTRATION 87
Rolling Clown
Fred Potter markets this toy in his craft shop in Sugar Grove, North Carolina. As the two handles are squeezed together, the thread loop that passes through the clown’s hands twists and untwists, causing the clown to flip over.
ILLUSTRATION 88 The rolling clown. One end of the horizontal peg fits loosely into a hole in one of the arms (arrow).
ILLUSTRATION 89 When the ends of the two arms are squeezed together, the loop of thread through the clown’s hands forces it to spin.
Slingshots
ILLUSTRATION 90 Lawton Brooks with his slingshot.
ARTHUR DAVIS: Mountain kids have played with slingshots for years. I used to kill birds with them, and I knocked the windows out of a schoolhouse one time, but not on purpose. I used shoe tongues to make the slings because they wouldn’t break easily. I use leather now; it’s the best. Canvas or tough cloth will make a pretty good one, too. You can throw a rock three times better with a slingshot than you can with your hand. You can also put a piece of lead in the slingshot and you can kill a bird with it. If you have a good round rock, it will go as straight as a bullet. I use old bicycle inner tubes now for the rubber strips.
LAWTON BROOKS: I’ve killed many rabbits with a slingshot. Marbles are the best things to kill them with. A rock won’t go as straight. If I get close up to what I’m aiming at, I can hit it; but when it’s a ways off, it goes to wobbling. Lead bullets is the best thing of all. I’ve shot the eyes out of a rabbit before.
I don’t like bought rubber on my slingshots. I like raw rubber. I like raw rubber because it’s got more power to it. It’s got a kick to it. We used to use inner tubes. I got some of that raw rubber out of some old T Models. Some of that would be red.
ILLUSTRATION 91
And then we’d carry these things with us to school. We’d get about to the school and they’d make us hide them. After school, we’d pick up little round rocks just laying in the road. Once we had a whole pile of rocks and we was standing there in front of the store just flipping them. And Edith said, “Lawton, let me shoot, let me shoot.”
I said, “Here it is. Now don’t flip yourself.”
She said, “I ain’t.” She drawed back and it knocked her right between the eyes and, boy, did I laugh!
Smoke Grinders
Another locally made toy Fred Potter stocks in his shop is this smoke grinder. The point of the toy is set in a slight depression, and as the horizontal bar is pumped with two fingers, the influence of the string twisting around the shaft and the weight of the wooden disk make the toy spin back and forth in the depression.
ILLUSTRATION 92 A smoke grinder. Pump up and down on the horizontal bar with two fingers, and the disc and shaft spin back and forth inside the bar.
Squirt Guns
STANLEY HICKS: We made them like those pop guns—a hollow piece and a plunger. Pull the plunger back and suck water up in there and then push the plunger to squirt it out. Sometimes kids would fill their squirt guns with hog mud and manure and squirt that mess all over us!
Stick Horses
LELIA GIBSON: In playing, we’d have stick horses—get a stick or a broomstick, tie a string on it [for a bridle], and straddle it, and lope! Now, that’s the kind of playing we had.
ILLUSTRATION 93 To make a pair of stilts, Clyde Runion first cuts two rhododendron trunks, leaving forks as shown.
Stilts (Tom Walkers or J-walkers or Walking Crutches)
EDD HODGINS: We just called ’em walkin’ crutches—that’s all we called them. Get you some forked sticks over there in the woods and cut ’em off. Keep your feet in those forks and walk in them. I got to where I could get a way up there. When you’re not up too high, it won’t bother you much, but you get up pretty high and you better know what you’re doing pretty good. [If you don’t] it’ll pitch you plumb across that pickup.
STANLEY HICKS: We’d wade the river on those. Then we’d see who could walk the furtherest without falling. We had a prize we’d give the one that walked the furtherest with ’em. It wasn’t much—a toy or something we made. We’d make little old horses and little old dogs for prizes.
ILLUSTRATION 94 Then he saws the ends off evenly and removes any rough knobs or branch ends (left) and tries them out (right).
MRS. TOM MACDOWELL: We’d cut sticks with forks in them, and we’d get old socks and wrap them around right there to keep them from hurting our feet, and we’d walk with those stilts. We’d wade the creek with them—go right on down the banks of the creek and then get out on a big flat rock.
VELER MARCUS: My brother and me would walk in those things and just ruin the sides of our shoes. We started off about a foot high, then go on up. We would get over here by Fred Lovell’s right along the creek. They was an old road there. That creek was about up to your knees, and we would carry them Tom Walkers down there—our high ones—and, boy, we had to get steady or we would fall. Once we got balanced we could go right on.
So we would get down there and if we heard a wagon coming round the bend, boy, we would get out of that water and get back up [on the bank] and hide so they wouldn’t see us down there playing in the creek. We didn’t want to be down there walking ’cause we might scare whatever they were driving [horses or oxen]. They would think, “Oh no, that’s those rude young’uns down there.” Of course, they were everybody’s rude young’uns that got out and waded the branch and all that!
ILLUSTRATION 95 Benson Justus caught on quickly.
Grape-vine Swings
NANNIE ANN SANDERS: Go to the woods and find a wild grape vine growing up into a tree. Cut it in two at the bottom and then hold onto that free end and swing. I liked to have broke my neck on a grape-vine swing once. I fell into a creek—the best place you ever fell. It didn’t break my neck but it sure shook me up!
HATTIE KENNY: Oh yeah, swing up in there and back. I remember one Sunday there was two men that fell off and broke their legs. They tried to swing at the same time and it pulled out with them. Both men broke their leg in the same place. One of ’em died with cancer and the other one got well and went right on.
Rope Swings
VELER MARCUS: Daddy would make us rope swings. Tie a rope in a loop on a limb in the yard where our shade trees were. Then he’d fix us a board for a seat. Notch the board so it wouldn’t turn us out. You had to be careful or it would turn you out and you would get hurt.
MRS. RAE SHOOK: We used to make swings. Somebody would climb way up on a tree and tie the ropes, and you’d get in it down here and somebody would swing you way out over yonder. You’d go a long ways. We’d have a piece of hickory bark across it for a seat.
Tops or Dancers
BUCK CARVER: [We had] homemade tops. They usually consisted of a spinner. You take a spool and whittle it to a sharp point. Then take out a round peg and plug it in the hole [of the spool] and slope it to a sharp point. Take that in your fingers and spin it on the floor.
ILLUSTRATION 96 Kenny Runion had a top similar to the one Buck describes.
ILLUSTRATION 97 The launcher Stanley uses.
ILLUSTRATION 98 With the dancer set in its launcher as shown in the diagram, Ronnie Welch threads a string through the hole in the
dancer’s shaft (left), and then twists the dancer inside the launcher to wind the string around its shaft (right).
STANLEY HICKS: We made dancers out of round wooden discs [4″–6″ in diameter and¼″–½″ thick]. We’d drill a hole in the middle and drive a sharpened stick through there, and they’d spin on the point of that stick. We would get three or four spinning at the same time and see which one would spin the longest. I’ve made some that would dance over five minutes, but if you’ve got one that dances that long, you’ve got a pretty good one. Then we’d play a game where we’d get them spinning together in a marked-off area, and the one that kicked the other ones out of there was the winner.
ILLUSTRATION 99 With a sharp pull of the string, Stanley launches the dancer, letting it drop out of the launcher and spin freely.
ILLUSTRATION 100 Dan Melton, Ronnie Welch, Stanley, and Richard Jones watch as it spins.
ILLUSTRATION 101 Mr. Davis shows us how he rubs the stick across the grooves of the whimmy-diddle to make the propeller turn.
Whimmy Diddles or Jeep Sticks
ARTHUR DAVIS: First one I ever saw was about twenty-five years ago. My friend found one up in Mountain City. Then he finally gave it to me. First one I ever saw made, I made it myself.
When I first started making jeep sticks I told everybody I could tell their fortunes with them. The idea is to put your thumbnail right up against the stick and it will go one way. If you want it to go the other way, put your thumbnail under the stick. You can make one of these in thirty minutes, or forty at least.
The ridges are what makes it turn. You could take a pencil and do the same thing. They can be any length; they’re usually about five inches long. Inside is just a piece of hard wood. You get the propeller as loose as you can get it. You can use any kind of wood. I usually use ivy because it usually has a crook in it. The crook makes it easier to hold.
ILLUSTRATION 102
I’ve always called them “jeep sticks,” that’s all I ever call them. Some people call them “gee-haw whimmy diddles.” [The “gee haw” part of the name that many people use comes from the fact that you can make the propeller go in either direction, just as the same commands make a mule or a steer turn to the right or the left.]
Hollow Whistles
HATTIE KENNY: We made hundreds of whistles out of willow along the creekbanks. We would get a slick, pretty one and cut it off as long as we wanted it. Then we would make a notch to blow through and put a piece of wood back in the end of it to plug the end. You had a whistle you could hear a mile. You can even learn to make little songs on ’em.
ILLUSTRATION 103 The piece of wood that goes in the end of the whistle is in Mr. Davis’s right hand.
ILLUSTRATION 104 Trying the whistle out.
MRS. RAE. SHOOK: Used to, in the spring, we’d go up and get some small pieces of young sourwood. Cut a sprout and rub the bark of it loose with another sprout and pull that bark off. Cut a mouthpiece where you blow into it. Then fix you a piece to go back down in the end to plug it up.
ARTHUR DAVIS: I’ve made them ever since I was a kid. The whistle is the easiest toy I’ve ever made because it only takes fifteen minutes to make. I used to make whistles with little holes on top of them, but I haven’t made one of them in a long time. Those make a different tune than the ones I make now.
I get my river cane out on Broad River. It’s smaller than bamboo. It’s better to cut them when they’re green because they’re easier to work with, but you can work them when they’re dry.
You stop one end up with a piece of wood to keep the air from coming out. You can use any kind of wood for the plug. The plugs will get tighter as they dry out. Sometimes they dry out so good that you can’t get them out again. But this doesn’t change the tune of it.
You want them dried out when you blow them. The length makes the difference in the tune, but you can have them long or short. Cut a little air hole in one end to blow through so it will whistle.
ILLUSTRATION 105
Split Whistles
ERNEST FRANKLIN: We made our whistles out of goose quills. You split the feather and blow against it.
EDD HODGINS: I could make you one in a few minutes if you want to see one. You just split an ivy stick and put you a leaf down in there and trim it off and then blow on that.
ILLUSTRATION 106 Edd Hodgins took us to the woods behind his house to show us how to make a whistle.
ILLUSTRATION 107 First he cuts a laurel branch and (top), shaves off two sides and splits it about halfway down the middle (bottom).
ILLUSTRATION 108 Then he inserts a laurel leaf into the split, trims off the excess with his knife, and (top), blows against one side to make the noise (bottom).
Whittled Animals
One tradition firmly associated with the Appalachians is that of whittling birds and animals, often for children to play with; more often, now, for sale to tourists and collectors through area crafts shops. One area whittler, Ben Bar, who lives in Clarkesville, Georgia, was selected for this chapter because of the appropriateness of many of his works for children’s play.
BEN BAR: I’ve been carving about thirty or thirty-five years. I did a little when I was sixteen or seventeen years old. I like to whittle. When I started off, using a big knife, I’d shave off sticks letting the shavings fall down. But then an old man told me one time, says, “You’ve got a nice stick there, but you whittle it all away and it’s gone. Make something out of that stick you can save instead of whittling it all away.”
ILLUSTRATION 109 Ben Bar with one of his creations.
I drive a lumber truck for a local sawmill for a living, and I can get lots of my wood—slabs, knots, and such that they can’t sell—from the mill. I also collect laurel wood to use in lots of my toys. I collect that in the woods during the winter when the sap is down so the bark won’t peel off later and ruin the toy.
ILLUSTRATION 110 Ronnie Welch with two of Ben’s carvings—a bird, and a dog with a treed raccoon.
ILLUSTRATION 111 Ben’s versions of a rooster …
ILLUSTRATION 112 … a steer …
ILLUSTRATION 113 … a horse and wagon …
ILLUSTRATION 114 … and a dog with three treed possums.
Kids can play with all my toys. They like them because they’re sturdy and there’s nothing about one to hurt them in any way.
I’ve never been trained to do my carving. I just do a little more and a little more getting ideas here and there. And I buy Barlow knives by the box, taping the handles so they won’t hurt my hand. I wear those knives out fast. This one here is about two and a half months old and it’s about wore out already!
Blowguns and Bouncing Pigs: Traditional Toymaking: The Foxfire Americana Library (6) Page 4
