The Foxfire 45th Anniversary Book

by Inc. The Foxfire Fund

  Daddy said, “Do you want to go turkey huntin’ in the morning?” I said, “Yeah, I’ll go with ya.” Daddy said, “Well, you’re seventeen. You never killed a deer or turkey. Let me call him [turkey] up, but you git down below me. He’s gonna come to you first, but let him get real close and shoot him. Don’t be a-movin’, or he’ll be gone.” So we got out thar bright and early that morning about four o’clock, and I about froze to death. I was mad. I said, “Thar ain’t no turkeys this early in the morning.” I was sittin’ over thar, and the sun came up. I a-heard gobble, gobble, gobble. I said, “Daddy, right down thar …” Boy, I made Daddy mad. He said, “Shut your mouth. Sit down.” I set down, and Daddy called him and called him, and I just set thar. I just had that gun layin’ thar. I didn’t know to have it ready. I just had my gun up thar lookin’ through the woods. Here he come with his head up and his tail all spread out. I said, “Goll, thar he is!” I grabbed my gun, and he was as fer as from here to my mailbox, way too fer to shoot. I fired down on him and cut bushes ever’ware [everywhere], and the turkey went brrrrrrrhththththththththt. Daddy said, “Dang almighty, boy, can’t teach you nothin.’ You shootin’ a hundred yards.” I said, “But, Daddy, he had a beard that long!” Daddy said, “It ain’t gonna do you no good ’cause you ain’t gonna get it!”

  So next time he took me, we got up thar, and Daddy says, “Now let him get close like I told you, but have your gun ready.” So I sat up thar. Daddy called and called, and I seen him. I seen him comin’, and just when I heard him stop, he had his head stuck up. I was too fer. I let him come on up. I was gonna shoot him when another one walked out right above it, and I didn’t know that it was a hen. I killed it dead. Daddy came down thar and said, “That’s a hen.” Boy, he got a hickory and striped me all over. He said, “You ain’t supposed to kill hen turkeys.” I said, “Daddy, you said a turkey.” I said, “Is that not a turkey?” Daddy said, “Can’t you see? A hen ain’t got no beard, but a gobbler’s got a big ole long beard. Why didn’t you shoot the one right by him that had the beard? Both of ’em was close enough.” I said, “Well, I’ll just kill one myself. I ain’t foolin’ with you no more.” Dad said, “Well, just pitch a fit. I don’t care.” He said, “I ain’t takin’ you no more.” Mama told me, “Don’t worry about your daddy. He got a bad temper.”

  Mama took me out thar way up on the hill. Mama told me, “I’ll show you something.” She built a cage out of w’re [wire], and she took a hoe and dug a little ditch. She said, “Take this corn and put a little in thar.” I put the corn in thar. She said, “Go back and just wait.” She said, “They’ll eat the corn, and we’ll bait them two or three times.” I’d go back every mornin’ and the corn’d be gone. About that fourth time I baited it, I went up thar, and thar he was in the pen, the big gobbler. He went in that pen, but he didn’t have enough sense to come out. He’d go ’round and ’round with his head stuck up just lookin’, but he wouldn’t go back out the same way he come in. I said, “Mama, Mama, come out here.” Mama come up thar. Mama said, “That’s the way to get a turkey.” I said, “Now, how you gonna get him out?” Mama said, “Right here.” She had a little bitty, short twenty-two rifle. Mama said, “Just like this.” And she put her hand over one eye like that and t’k [took] the rifle and went SNAP! He went flop, flop, flop, flop. I said, “You killed him!” She said, “I was showin’ you how to.” I reckon I pulled him out, and Mama said, “We’ll fool your Daddy.”

  T’k him down thar, and Daddy was in his favorite rockin’ chair with his pipe in his mouth. He said, “Ol’ David and all them a-turkey huntin’ ain’t killed nothin’.” Mama said, “Well, he’s a lot better hunter than you are, Ralph!” Said, “Look here!” Mama held him [the turkey] up and said, “He don’t need no shotgun—killed him with a twenty-two rifle.” Daddy said, “Lord have mercy, how’d you do that?” And you know, Mama ought to have told me not to tell. I said, “Hit him in a pen. He had his head stuck up, and Mama shot him.” She smacked me right in the mouth. She said, “You tell everything you know.” Daddy said, “Baited him?” I said, “No, Mama did.” Daddy said, “Baitin’s illegal. That ain’t playin’ fair.”

  Daddy was raised over on Germany Road. His original people come from across the waters. His great-granddaddy was a full-blooded German. His mother and Grandma Caroline was a three-quarter Cherokee Indian. I believe thar was seven of them. Thar was four boys and three girls, and they was all raised, every one of them, on Germany Road.

  I made it to the twelfth grade by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin. Gamblin’ and smokin’ and pitchin’ quarters against the wall, I got a whoopin’ six times for that, and he [principal] couldn’t break me, so he put me in the lunchroom dumping dishes. Every time some smart aleck come up, he throwed the tray and mashed my fingers against that rubber thing that held the trays. I’d get mad and throw a cup back at him. So he [the principal] took me out of thar because I was always getting into it, and he put me back thar washin’ them big ol’ pots. Lord, I sure did hate that. I had to scrub and scrub. He said, “If I catch you at this again, I’ll put you back in there. You can either play football or soccer or something to stay out of trouble.” So I decided that I’d go into football. Well, I played football there, and I couldn’t do no good, so I went into basketball ’cause I was taller. I got good at basketball ’cause I could run out there and make a hook shot. But, you know, we went to Franklin, North Carolina, and they ’as this big ol’ long-legged fella. He come runnin’ down through thar and stole the ball right out from under me, and he run up thar and made a big hook shot and made it. I said, “I’ll be durn!” He’s out there celebrating and, a’ course, we got beat. Me and him got into it, and they throwed me off the basketball team. Coach Rumsey said, “You ain’t supposed to get mad when they steal the ball and beat you.” I said, “Well, if he hadn’t stole the ball, I’s gonna make the shot, and we would’ve won.” He said, “It don’t matter, though. You too slow.” I said, “I can’t keep up with a race car.” He told me, “This is what I’m gonna do.” He said, “I’m gonna git you a job, and every day, fourth and fifth period, you can mop the gym floor.” And, boys, I liked that. I went in there and mopped the floor. There wasn’t nobody in there, and I’d shoot the basketball and kick soccer.

  There’s a lot of good people down on Chechero. Most of ’em always stuck together. Down there, they was just neighbors, and they’d help each other because times was hard. If you wanted like a bushel of corn, and they had it, well, they’d give it to you. If you wanted a ride to town or something, they’d always take you to town and wouldn’t charge you nothin’ to go to the store and back or somethin’. They’d let you squirrel hunt on their land and deer hunt on their land. They didn’t care just so long as you didn’t throw down a match on their land and burn down their land or nothin’. Every now and then they’d allow loggin’, you know, and they’d sell timber, you know, stuff like that. Most of them old people are about gone now. They wasn’t much government land on Chechero. Most of it’s all private owned, you know. They hand it on down through the generations, you know. When the old ones die off, they give it to the boys and the girls, and they hang on to it.

  I seen Mama and Daddy walk from Chechero up Smith Mountain with a big ol’ snow on the ground, and I bet you a dollar it was five or six degrees. They’d walk all the way to town to work. I seen ’em do that several times. I seen it pourin’ down rain, and they got a taxi: Moon Smith, back in them days. It seemed like he charged seventy-five cents to a dollar to bring you home, and most times they didn’t have seventy-five cents or a dollar, so they just walked home. If some of the people who lived there on the road seen ’em goin’ home, they would’ve brought ’em home.

  When you makin’ just a dollar an hour, you couldn’t afford to do nothin.’ Of course, you know, they take out taxes on you just like they do now, and if you got eleven kids, you know. People had to sell coon dogs and hogs and chickens and, Lord, I mean everything. I seen Daddy raise five and six hogs, some o
f ’em four or five hundred pounds apiece—killed ’em and sell the meat. People come by and buy a big ham or somethin’, or he’d take it to a shootin’ match, and they’d shoot on it, you know. Somethin’ like a quarter on it or fifty cents on it, and he could make money that way ’n’ stuff. He fooled with cane one time, made sorghum syrup, but he didn’t make too much money at it. It cost too much to fool with it. He got into honeybees, and the honeybees ’ud always sting the children, and Mama made Daddy get rid of all the honeybees.

  I helped Daddy tote sugar to the still, and usually you had to tote it way up a big bank about three or four miles. Daddy always waded a branch. That way, you didn’t leave no trail. The revenuers usually would ride down the road and see a trail like that, and they’d know that it was a still. Daddy would wade the branch up to the still, and we’d tote sugar to it and wade back down the branch, and there wasn’t no trail. He run it usually at night or in the mornin’ when it was pourin’ down rain—’cause of the dampness, you know. You couldn’t smell it. That’s the other thing; you could smell it if it was a clear night. He always tried to keep it where you couldn’t smell it. It seemed like Daddy sold it for ninety cents a gallon. It was pure corn. I mean, you could drink a pint, and you couldn’t stand up in a twenty-acre field. I mean, it had the power to it! I tried it.

  I tried some when I was young. I’s probably ’bout fifteen, I guess. I tried some at the still, see. It was comin’ out of this spout, what you call a “worm” comin’ down. He’s runnin’ a jug under there, and I stuck me a pint bottle that I’d found and washed out up under there. I run it full, and I sticked it up under my coat. Daddy didn’t pay no attention. When I got up to the house, me and my brother said, “Let’s try some of Daddy’s squeezin’s.” I said, “All right, we’ll try it.” So we opened it, and I took a drink of it. I mean, it went down smooth. I said, “It ain’t got no power to it. It tastes like water.” He said, “Give me a drink,” and he turned up a big drink. He took two drinks, Frank took two, and Cliff took two. We got up, and I fell out the back door. Frank fell on top of me, and here come Cliff. We ’as all piled in thar. Daddy come out there and said, “Lord have mercy, them boys have been in my squeezin’s.” I said, “No, Daddy, I run it out of the still in a pint bottle and brought it home.” Daddy said, “Lord, son, you, whoa, you shouldn’t’ve done that.” I said, “We’ll be fine.” We got out there just a-laughin’ and sangin’. Boys, the next mornin’, I woke up and my head felt like a fifty-five-gallon drum. I thought I was gonna die. I said, “Oh, my Lord!” I was just a-rollin’ and pukin’ out there. I said, “My God, that corn’s rotten; that’s the rottenest corn I ever drunk.” Daddy said if I’d took it and let it age a long time, it’d be all right. That’s the only one that I ever drunk that Daddy made.

  Somebody come and bought it from him. I don’t know who it was, but some of those’d come and buy it by the case from him. So many people got to comin’ to the house that the sheriff seen all them cars, and he come down there. Daddy had to quit sellin’. So he’d just make it and leave it in the woods, just put it in the case, and the man that’d come to buy it’d just pick it up there. They loaded and hauled it out until he got caught. He had to quit. See, they’d a-sent him to the chain gang, but he told the judge, “Look, judge, I got eleven children. They all barefooted, and half-nekked, and about starved to death, and if you send me to the chain gang, my wife can’t keep ’em up. If you sent me to the chain gang, the state is gonna have to take care of my children.” So he turned Daddy loose where he didn’t have to feed eleven children. That’s smart thinkin’ in them days. See, if Daddy had played it smart, they wouldn’t’ve caught him then, but I think Daddy had tried some, and he was about full and he was up there. He always blowed the harp. He had his harmonica with him, and he was up there playin’. A man come to pick it up, and he got to blowin’ the car horn. Daddy kept a-right on playin’, and the law pulled up behind the man and said, “What are you doin’ blowin’ the horn?” The man took off and left, and they took off after him. The other law behind ’em stopped, and here Daddy was a-blowin’ a harp. They heard Daddy blowin’ the harp, and he was still up there at the still. He had about fifteen or twenty cases stacked up on top. He said, “Hey, Ralph! What are you gonna do with them?” He said, “I’m gonna sell them.” “No, they gotta go with us.” So he took it all, and they chopped the still. Well, I believe he told me they chopped the still up with an ax and took all the liquor. They gave him, it seemed like, a hundred-and-seventy-five-dollar fine, and they told him he couldn’t be around anybody that drank no more or ran stills.

  I imagine the law poured it out or sent it to Atlanta because some of it might not have been safe to drink. I don’t know. I know what Daddy made was safe because he made it out of corn. He said all you do is take corn and put it in a tow [burlap] sack and put it in a creek, and it’ll sprout. It sprouts through that sack. Then you take it to the mill. He had an old-timey mill that he’d take it to, and he’d grind it up. Daddy’d make corn mash out of it, and he’d put it on the still and cook it and run it through that still through that worm to that big jug he had down there. He made it out of corn, yeast, and sugar and somethin’ else. I can’t remember what it was. There ’as somethin’ else that he did to give it the kick, but I don’t know what that was. I believe, it seems like a bale of sugar was fifty pounds. Fifty pounds a bale, I believe it was. It was Dixie Crystals, and if you bought too much in one store, then they’d catch you there because you were buyin’ all that sugar. He said he was doin’ a lot of cannin’, but, see, they didn’t believe that. That’s when they first got on to him makin’ liquor.

  PLATE 17 David showing off a prize bluegill he caught on Lake Burton in Rabun County, Georgia

  Me and my brothers were goin’ fishin’ for trout, but we couldn’t find no fish bait. It was so dry, and there ’as a big hornets’ nest hangin’ on the limb. I said, “Right there’s the bait, boys.” Cliff said, “Reckon how many’re in there?” Frank said, “Well, a man told me in town the other day that the way to get a hornets’ nest is to cut you a stick and stop the hole up, take you a knife and cut the limb off, and stick the nest down in the water. It’ll drown ’em.” I said, “Well, that makes sense.” And we all agreed, you know. Frank said, “Well, I’m the one that’s got a knife, so let me try.” He was always the bravest one. He cut him a stick. He whittled it down and said, “That about right?” I said, “That’s about the size of the hole that’ll fit.” Well, he went up there. He got it in, but they was comin’ in out in the air. Boys, when he stopped that hole up, I mean you talk about pourin’ it to Frank! They just started comin’ in out of everywhere, and one popped me right the side of the head. I took off, and them things followed us plumb to the creek. I had to jump in the creek, and I like to never got ’em off me. I run home cryin’ to Ma, all swelled up like a bullfrog. Mama said, “Is the stick in the hole?” I said, “Lord, yeah.” She said, “They won’t leave that nest. They’ll sting you if you get ten foot of it.” Daddy said, “Wait a minute. I’ll get the nest for you tonight.” So he took a long cane pole and tied him up a big ol’ Clayton Tribune on it and lit it and stuck it to it. He said, “Here’s your bait.” He went up there and got the bait. We went up there the next day, and we caught eight or ten big, brown trout. I guess that’s one of the biggest browns I ever caught. It was about eighteen inches long. I caught him down yonder on Big Creek.

  Daddy got snake bit and like to died, and the house burnin’ up that time were some of the worst times I remember. If your house burnt back in them days, all your neighbors usually would just come and rebuild it and wouldn’t charge you nothin’. Then if their house burnt, you just returned the favor if you could get the lumber. Lightnin’ hit my house through the meter. Back in them days they just had these switch boxes stuck to the wall, and they had these fuses, you know. It was just cobbled up, but it worked.

  Times have changed, ’cause, you know, there wasn’t a whole lot in Clayton. It wasn’
t big like it is now. I mean, you come to town and things were a lot cheaper than they are now. When I was a boy, you could buy a twelve-gauge shotgun brand new for twenty-seven dollars and a half. Now they run anywhere from ninety-eight to one hundred and seventeen. Haircut is eight dollars, and back then you’d get a haircut for seventy-five cents. When you buy a pair of boots, you buy the best boots made for twenty dollars. Now they’re hundred ’n’ fifty, hundred ’n’ sixty dollars. Things changed completely around from what they was thirty years ago. They were usually all just local poor people tryin’ to make a livin’ is what it was. There wasn’t no such thing much as sellin’ wood because nobody would buy wood. They cut it off their own land. A few people had gas. A few people back in them days had a lot of money, and they could afford gas, but most of ’em burnt wood, either that or coal. Now people go to town every day. When I was a boy, people went to town just only on the weekends. Friday evening and Saturday was their day to go to town, and they did all their grocery shoppin’ and buyin’ clothes, haircuts and shoes, huntin’ supplies, and sewin’ supplies at one time, and never did come back until they was out again. You see, a lot of people back then owned a lot of land. If a man had a lot of money back then and bought a lot of land and had it now, he’d be well off. Nobody had the money to buy it; it was cheap. I remember you could buy it for two hundred fifty dollars an acre, but where in the world would you get the two hundred and fifty? That was the trouble ’cause they weren’t no jobs, you know—sawmillin’ and makin’ whiskey or farmin’. They wasn’t much money in farmin’, for sure. What in the world is a man supposed to do?