The Foxfire 45th Anniversary Book

by Inc. The Foxfire Fund

  I suppose it’s a lot different from our children growin’ up and when I went to school. Now they cannot discipline with a hickory or ruler. When I went to school, if you done something and did not mind the teacher, then you got your hand bent back with a ruler and got the palm of your hand blistered with it. Then they also used hickories; now you can’t do that because of the way things are. There was not a lot of after-school activities. Bob drove the school bus, and he was always waitin’. We just had to get on the bus. Sometimes they had a basketball game, but it was outside. The Otto School and the Mulberry School would play. They would have a basketball game ever’ once in a while, but not much.

  Most of the toys I had was homemade, like the wooden-wheel wagon. Sometimes if you could get a grown-up to make one, then it would really fly—down a hill of course. We made the wheels out of either black gum or pine, and, you know, you had to make the wheels as round as possible. Some of them jumped up and down. When I got a little bit older, Dad bought a wagon—just a red wagon. We wore that wagon out till nothin’ was left. That is ’bout the first toy that I remember. Course we got some small cars and toys like that, but not much. That is what we had to play with.

  Some of the chores were carry in wood, and we had to go get the cows. Sometimes the cows were hard to find, ’specially in the summertime. We would turn them out in the mountains, and sometimes they would forget to come home, and we would have to hunt cows. We fed the hogs, hoed corn, and in the fall we took the feed to the cows.

  Christmas was always a good time of the year—a good feelin’ time. We did not get much for Christmas; we got an orange, an apple, and a couple pieces of candy. Then, when the wagon come along, that was somethin’, but that is about all we got. Somebody in the community would dress up like Santa Claus, and that was a lot of fun. I never did know the difference till I must have been twelve years old, ’fore I didn’t know there wasn’t a Santa Claus. I mighta knowed it, but I did not want to believe it.

  Dating was not like it is now. You had to be so old, ’specially the girls. The boys was all too bashful to ask a girl out. If they did—and if they accepted—then you had to go in and get ’em. You did not have a car, and you did not go on the outside and holler for them to come out. You had to go in and meet the parents, and, you know, now it is not that way. You either go to the house and honk the horn, and they come out, or they meet in town. We had to go to the house and get ’em. I used to date a girl over in North Carolina ’cross Warrior. She had to slip out because her daddy was real strict. I was scared to death of him. That was before I went in the service, but I don’t know how I got over there. One of my sisters lived over there, and that’s how I met her.

  I didn’t have much of a social life. We did just about everything that you could think of for fun when I was growing up. We did not get into mischief. We had lots of fun with things that kids would not even think about now. Some things we done was normal things back in that time. There wasn’t anywhere to go, and nobody had a vehicle. We had square dances from house to house. It was lots of fun going to candy drawin’s and all sorts of parties. [Editor’s note: See explanation of candy drawings in Foxfire 2, pages 372–74, and Foxfire 3, page 322.] We had lots of different kinds of parties. It was a lot of fun just goin’ from house to house. If you went from house to house like we done now, you’d probably get run off. Then people did not care because that is all we had to do. Even where we had the square dances and things, the people welcomed the youngsters. A lot of ’em was old that went to square dances. We had three or four places that we did have square dances. One was Hap-n-So on Patterson Creek. We had a lot of square dances there. I used to pick a mandolin and a guitar. Brother Bob did, too. We was the ones who made the music most of the time for the square dances. We went to parties all the time. We had parties, and we had candy drawin’s. I don’t know who done it, but they bought all sorts of different colors of candy; that is how we usually met the girls. We could go with the girls, and you chose a partner. You had to go around the house, and then it did not matter about the heat ’cause we used wood, and the houses was all cold anyway. You drew candy; they broke it up real small, and as long as you could get a piece that matched, you could keep drawin’, but if you got a different color than your partner then you had to go back around and try again. We had corn shuckin’s and all that stuff. That is ’bout all they was of a social life. As times got better, Billy Long had a truck that he hauled acid wood in [Editor’s note: See explanation of acid wood in Foxfire 9, page 367], and we all got to go to town on Saturday afternoon in that truck. We all got to go to town, and he never got in a hurry. He always waited on us. He wouldn’t run off and leave us ’cause it was a long way from Betty’s Creek to Clayton. He would bring us all back home. Sometimes it would be before dark.

  When I went out on my own is when I got drafted in the service—kindly got broke away from home that way, but when I came back home, I met Mildred. I think we dated for about two years, and then we got married. We, Brother Oakley and me, tore down a loggin’ camp. We built a house out of that loggin’ camp. It was just old rough lumber, and it had a kitchen, dining room, and one bedroom. There was also a living room. We did not have enough strips to strip up the cracks, so you could see whatever was going on outside. You did not have to look out the window. You had a couple of windows in the house. That is how we got started off, and that is how I got broke away from home.

  I had three children—Gary, Mickey, and Julia. Gary passed away. Mickey is here. He works on old cars all the time, and he’s real good at it. Julia is married. She’s got three children, and she lives in Tallulah Falls right now.

  Right now I am retired. I worked at the Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation, now known as A.I.D., a division of RBC Bearings, for thirty-five years. When I was there, we made parts for Lockheed aircraft, the Navy, and for the Air Force.

  Me and Mildred got a nursery, of course, and we work in the nursery. We have lived here for fifty-some years. I started soon after we moved here, you know, tryin’ to learn. I don’t know how I done it, but I did—with her help. I started rootin’ azaleas and rhododendrons and things like that. It went from there and—somewheres along the line—some things I couldn’t root, not readily, ’cause I didn’t know how. So I got started on the seed. Things that I can’t root, I growed from seeds. Native azaleas, for me, is hard to root. Some of ’em will; some of ’em won’t. But if you raise ’em from seed, it’s easy. I learned by trial and error. I’ve got lots of books, and I belong to the Rhododendron Society. We get the magazine every two months, and they publish a lot of different things that people do, and I learned a lot from that because anything that I could find that people done things easily, or easier than I could do it, then I’d try it. That’s how I got started. I had lots of failures—Mildred could vouch for that—and I still do. Even this time I threw away fifteen flats of seedlings that I had done something wrong with; I don’t know what, but I had to dump all of ’em. Every once in a while, you will get a disease. You’ll get things like mites and spider mites and things, and I have a terrible time with spider mites. But I’m finally gettin’ rid of the spider mites. I used to root roses, and the spider mites made me quit just about because I couldn’t find anything that would kill them. You know they have little webs, and they will get inside the leaf; you can’t find spray that will penetrate, but hopefully now I have found somethin’ that will penetrate.

  We had, most of the time, three ladies helpin’; Mildred’s sister was one. When we’d be plantin’ these, they never did get the act of sowin’ seeds. I couldn’t trust ’em. I’d always sow ’em myself and cover them up. I guess that was me. They probably could have done it better than me, but I didn’t trust ’em. You know it’s a onetime deal once you sow ’em, and if that’s all the seed you have, then you just lost a year. They’d try to sow some sometimes. They’d always cover ’em too deep—or at least I thought so, but they was really good at takin’ ’em out of the seedbed. [Edi
tor’s note: At this point in the interview, Coyl’s wife, Mildred, laughs and speaks up to tell me her opinion on the subject: “He sows them too thick. He sows them so close together that you can’t get them out.” Coyl laughs, too, and acquiesces: “That’s what she tells me, that I sow them too thick. An’ I do.”] You had to take ’em out with a toothpick ’cause they was so little and put them in individual cups. And that’s what they done. They was better at that than me. You know women is always better at somethin’ like that. I don’t know how many a day we would take up. You know the seed plant is very small, and you can fit thousands in one flat. It looked pretty good. You can do mountain laurel and rhododendron, but the mountain laurel—it takes two years to root the mountain laurel, but you know in two or three weeks, they’ll come up in seed. So it makes a lot of difference.

  We grow plants of all kinds. That is what I love the most. We grow lots of plants, not as many as we used to, but we still grow a lot of plants. I’m still tryin’ to retire and get out of the business, but I think people don’t want me to. I feed the birds, and we have, I don’t know how many birds. We have a man from Atlanta that comes up here in the summertime. He takes pictures of the birds. I think he puts them on television; well, I saw them one time on television. He came last summer and stayed a week. He didn’t stay with us. He came every day for a week and took pictures of the birds. We got a lot of birds.

  PLATE 23 Coyl Justice demonstrating the tumbler he uses to make compost for his daughter-in-law

  I do not know of a life-changing event that would be worth talkin’ about. Everythin’ was pretty normal, I guess. The thing that changed me the most was when our son Gary passed away. That probably changed both of our lives forever. It just was not the same—never will be. Of course we have both of the other children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, but it is not the same since he passed away.

  From the time that I was growing up till now, life has changed a lot. When I went to World War II, Betty’s Creek didn’t have any power. There mighta been a couple of cars up here, but we didn’t have any power. Betty’s Creek didn’t get any power till I came back out of the service. That was 1946 to 1947, somewhere in there. After World War II, things began to change; we got power up here, and they built a new road. It used to be about six miles up Betty’s Creek. Now, from my house to Dillard, it is about four point two miles. There has been lots of changes, and the different plants [factories] have all moved in. When I was growin’ up until I went to the service, they wasn’t jobs; only workin’ in the woods, cuttin’ timber, things like that. That changed rapidly after World War II. We done a lot of walking and a lot of hard work, and since the plants have come in, and we got jobs, it has made it a lot easier. So life’s been pretty good.

  I got a lot of advice, but it would take too long to tell you! The best advice I could give children would be—and this would go to the parents, too—go to church, stay out of drugs, stay out of drinkin’, and lots of other things. Children that are raised to go to church—and parents treat them like they’re supposed to—they’re not going to do drugs. They’re not going to drink, but they might try. Most all children is going to experiment, but if taught to go to church, then they won’t do that.

  I like Christianity, not religion. Everybody’s got religion, but to me it’s a serious thing. I have been a Christian ever since I was probably fourteen or fifteen years old. That does not mean I lived a Christian life all the time because I went out in the world. When you’re saved, and you know you are a Christian, you always come back. When you’re young, you know, you sow your wild oats, but when you get saved you might get out in the world. You always come back. I have enjoyed my Christian life. It has not been easy, but I enjoyed it.

  I don’t think I would change a thing. I am happy like my life is, and I don’t think I would change a thing. If I had a million dollars, I wouldn’t change a thing.

  “The first airplane … we thought it was the Lord a-comin’.”

  ~An interview with Vaughn Billingsley~

  On an autumn afternoon, Kasie Hicks, another Foxfire student, and I took a trip to Vaughn Billingsley’s home. When we arrived, I knocked on the door, and the friendly, warm smile of his wife greeted us. As Mr. Billingsley sat in his favorite La-Z-Boy and shared with us the fascinating story of his life, the fireplace warmed our backs and felt so homey. The interview lasted for a little over an hour, and then we turned off the tape and just chatted.

  Today Vaughn Billingsley, father and grandfather, is the owner of a successful nursery. In fact, he recently patented a hybrid, an oak-leaf hydrangea, which he lovingly named “Vaughn’s Lillie” after Lillie, his wife of many years, with whom he fell in love after he, as he likes to tell, winked at her.

  With his childhood stories, Mr. Billingsley took me “back in the older days,” and he showed me what it was like growing up years ago, when life was slower but much harder.

  —Lacy Forester

  My name is Vaughn Billingsley, and I’m old. I think I’m older than I really am. I’ll be sixty-four on my birthday, July the ninth, 2003. I had one sister and two brothers: Barbara and Jack and Darrell. I was the oldest. I was born in the house. There wasn’t no doctor. The doctor finally come and saw how Mama was. [Having me] about killed her. I was a big ol’ baby. I think that she passed out. I can’t ’member, though.

  Well, my relationship with my parents was pretty good. Mother said I was stubborn as a mule, and I had to get whoopin’s a lot. My daddy bought and sold cattle. He grew cabbage and was a truck farmer; he did other jobs, too. I believe that after school, we had to work as gardeners an’ everything. We didn’t have no time to play. We all just worked, kids and grown people. We hoed the field and picked cabbage ever since we was little kids. We got out there, and we had to do all the plowin’, too. We did the plowin’ with a team of mules.

  I went to school up at Scaly Mountain, North Carolina. We had a two-room schoolhouse, and there was four grades in it. We had primer, then we had first, and then we had the “high first.” We spent four years getting into the second grade. We didn’t have no buses much. They couldn’t haul us all, so we went to the fourth grade there in Scaly. I don’t remember none of them teachers ever tryin’ to help me to learn how to read any. We caught these buses to Highlands when we was in the fifth grade.

  Well, there wasn’t no favorite memories from my childhood. ’Bout all I can remember is bein’ cold and hungry, raised up in the Depression, and didn’t anybody have no money. It was rough. We was raised on beans and taters. One evenin’, me and this boy went out, and we was hungry, so we decided to pick persimmons at James Miller’s. We climbed up in that tree so that we could get the ’simmons off of it and eat some of ’em. Well, it was gettin’ cold that evenin’, and the sun was goin’ down. It must have been six below zero, and we was up there, and the cold wind went to blowin’. We got so cold, we liked to not have got down out of that tree. It’s a wonder we hadn’t froze to death. We finally got out of the tree, and we got up close to a chestnut log. There was logs layin’ all over the pasture. They was dead, so everyone let the cows pick around ’em. Well, we both laid down on the ground, and it was froze. I have never been so cold. It’s a wonder we made it through that, but I told him what to do. I said, “Let’s get up and start runnin’, and we’ll just run all the way home, just hard as we can run. The harder we run, we can get warmed up.” We didn’t get no ’simmons at the end. We runned just as hard as we could run, and by the time we got home, we was good and warm.

  There was no way of ridin’ [in a vehicle]; if y’ got in a hurry, was goin’ anywhere hurryin’, then y’ had to run. We went either by walkin’ or by ridin’ a mule. Some people had a wagon and wheels. You would walk to town and back, or ride in whatever you could hitch. Not many people had a rig. My mother one time was goin’ to town, and she got out and started walkin’, and some guy come along and picked her up. She never would tell who it was. But she got out, and she asked him, “How much do I o
we you?” He said, “Oh, about a nickel and maybe get a box of soda.” Some people would have to catch a ride with the mailman when he would come through. They’d catch him then. In my life, that’s how it was.

  I remember the first car I ever seed. It scared me to death. Me and my cousin Gene was out. We lived in an old log house down on the edge of the road. We was the only house back in there. We heard somethin’; we turned around and looked, and there was an old Model T comin’ down the field there, down on the old road, and it was goin’ durp, durp, durp, comin’ down through there. It scared us to death. We jumped up and run in the house and crawled under the bed. I can remember getting just as far as I could up against the wall, and we were just a-screamin’, scared to death.

  The first airplane we ever seen, we thought it was the Lord a-comin’. We seen the little white thing up in the air. Well, I was the one who seen it. I was out in the yard, and I seen that. I went to hollerin’ for everybody to come and look. They all come out and looked and looked. Mama come out on the porch; she looked up and said, “Well, the Bible said that in the last days that He would send signs and wonders from the heavens before He comes.” I thought that was the truth.

  Well, I don’t know if there ever was a doctor when we got sick. We just rode a mule to get to the doctor. If you could catch somebody or know somebody and get them to take you to the doctor, you’d be in good shape. There wasn’t a lot of people around then—might be a mile or two apart. I guess we lived three or four miles from where we saw the vehicle, and that was the closest place out. We lived just as far back as we could get without comin’ out somewheres else.

  Well, we’d just get out, and we’d run around and go to the swimmin’ hole when I was growin’ up. They was a swimmin’ hole up there in the creek. We’d stay all day in the creek; then we’d go, y’ know. They didn’t care, I don’t reckon—Mama and Daddy didn’t. They’d let us go until it got dark, and we’d stay gone all day. If we didn’t go to the swimmin’ hole, then we’d go huntin’ or somethin’—squirrel huntin’ or rabbit huntin’—whatever you could get and make a little extra money off of. Muskrat was all the way up to three dollars. I mean, a big muskrat was just about as much as a hog.