As Mrs. Youngblood demonstrated to us her method for making honeysuckle baskets, she told us:
PLATE 10 A completed basket.
Back in the mountains [when we were children], we didn’t have nothing much to do. We didn’t have nowhere to go, so such things as this [basketmaking] was pastimes. When we would see anything made, why we would want to fix [us one] too, so we’d copy it. My mother would make our Easter baskets, and she’d also make big baskets, big enough to put beans in [when we picked them. That’s where I first learned how to make a basket.]
[Then I married and] moved to Buford and still made baskets as a pastime. [Making baskets out of honeysuckle vines] was interesting to me because it’s something from nature. I just enjoy things like this—you can start from nothing and make something out of it.
The best time [to gather honeysuckle vines] is in the spring of the year. They’re tender then and they won’t break as bad as when the sap goes down later in the year. You can find some patches where the vines do not have many knots [or joints] in them. Little knots will be all right. They won’t [interfere with the weaving]. Take [off those] that’ll come off easy and leave the rest. You can work a few in, but not too many.
It takes a good-sized boxful of vines to make a medium-sized basket, a lunch basket about eight inches around and about seven inches high. It doesn’t matter what size vines you collect. Larger ones [a little smaller than the diameter of a pencil] make the ribs of the basket, and smaller ones [are used] for the webbing or filling.
We can just wind some [of these vines] up and put them in this eight-quart pan. Let me put in about a cup of washing powder and cover the vines with water, put a lid on ’em and boil them till that skin’ll start slipping off of ’em. The longer you boil [the vines], the better they’ll skin. To see if they’ve cooked enough, just pick up one once in a while and see if all that bark’ll slip off. Some don’t have to cook long and some have to cook [from thirty minutes to an hour]. The soapsuds make the [bark] come off quick. Just run your thumbnail down the vine and take the bark completely off. The vines need to be soapy when you’re stripping them. After they’re stripped, put them in a pan of clear, cold water and they’ll stay good for as long as a week [if you don’t have time to weave your basket right away. If they do dry out, you may soak them again later when you are ready to weave your basket].
When my kids were little, I’d boil [my vines] outside in one of them old-timey black washpots. I’d keep ’em in the water till I worked ’em up, peeling them and all that. Then maybe the next day, I’d make my basket.
It doesn’t take but about a couple of hours [to make a lunch basket like this] once you get started. Main thing is gettin’ your stuff all ready. [Then after the basket’s made,] it’ll dry out in a little while, about two hours. I haven’t, but I guess you could [dye some of the baskets]. I don’t [even] shellac them. I just let them stay natural.
There was a collar shop up here in Buford and I’d get out and make these baskets and sell ’em to the ones that worked there. My husband also sold them. Later, I sold ’em out of my house.
I made what they call a tumbler. [Those are baskets that are] as big as a glass or a pint fruit jar. You put flower pots in ’em. They sell like everything! I sold I don’t know how many till I got rid of every one. I gave the last one I made to somebody for their birthday. I don’t even [have one left] for a pattern and I do try to keep one of everything for a pattern. I kept saying, “Well, I’ll make me some more,” but I never got ’round to it.
PLATE 11 Lay two of the longer ribs (A and B) side by side. Using a piece of thin vine, make a figure 8 around the two ribs.
PLATE 12 Lay two more long ribs (C and D) side by side across the first two.
PLATE 13 Continue with the thin vine, making another figure 8 around the two new ribs. Keep pulling, as tightly as possible, the vine with which you are weaving.
PLATE 14 Lay one long rib (E) across the other four.
PLATE 15 The ribs being placed as described in the diagrams.
PLATE 16 Proceed weaving with the thin vine going through the ribs, over two, under two, making one complete circle.
PLATE 17 Add another long rib.
PLATE 18 Continue weaving over two, under two, for another complete circle.
PLATE 19 Add ribs until all thirteen have been used.
PLATE 20 Mrs. Youngblood weaving the basket.
PLATE 21 After all long ribs are in place and the last circle woven, begin weaving over one, under one. After making one complete circle like this, begin adding the short ribs. Place them at random, wherever there is a wide gap between two ribs. Insert them toward the center as far as they can be pushed.
PLATE 22 Continue weaving over one, under one, until all fifteen have been used. Weaving note: When one piece of thin vine is almost completely used up, push the last inch or two into the weave and begin with another vine by pushing the first inch or two of that one into the weave and start with the over, under process again.
PLATE 23 After the diameter of the basket is the size desired, start lifting ribs slightly upward to form the sides. Create the shape you wish the basket to be, curved or straight up, by controlling how tightly you weave.
PLATE 24 Go completely around the basket. With another vine, sew in opposite direction along rim to secure top edge. When finished, clip the vine, leaving about two inches. Run this vertically into the basket’s edge to give a smooth finish.
Continue weaving until basket reaches height desired. Mrs. Youngblood told us, “You could keep adding to this. Keep going ’round and have it as big as you want it.” Weave a long vine vertically into the basket (about one inch) to end this phase. Ribs will still be sticking above the weaving. Cut ribs off two inches above weaving.
Insert a new piece of thin vine into basket’s weaving and begin bending ribs along the edge, sewing them as you go.
To form the handle, braid three honeysuckle vines together. Leave about two inches unbraided on each end. Weave these ends vertically into the sides of the basket, starting on the inside.
REMEDIES
Aching Feet
PLATE 25 Maude Houk gathering herbs for a remedy.
Bathe feet before bedtime in a strong solution made from white oak bark.
DIANE FORBES
Make a real hot tea out of burdock. Soak feet in the tea just before going to bed. To make the tea, use the whole plant, including roots. Pull it up, wash it, chop it up and put in a pot of water, and boil and steam. Burdock may also be dried and the tea made during the winter.
FLORA YOUNGBLOOD
Arthritis
Make a tea by boiling the roots of ginseng. That gets the strength out of them. Drink the tea or rub it on the joints, and either will have the same effect.
NUMEROUS MARCUS
You can mix the roots of ginseng and goldenseal together in liquor.
NUMEROUS MARCUS
Eat lots of raw vegetables and fruits.
DOROTHY BECK
Take a buckeye and put it in your pocket and carry it around with you.
ELIZABETH ENDLER
My daddy used barbell. It has a yellow bloom. The little flowers are shaped like little bells and hang on the underside of the leaves. Cut the barbell plant down to the ground. Use the stems. Chop them up and put in a pot and boil them about twenty-five minutes. Strain the tea and drink it. It’ll limber you up just right now.
FLORA YOUNGBLOOD
Asthma
Use the inner bark of wild yellow plum trees. Knock the old bark off and scrape down next to the wood and use these scrapings along with mullein leaves. Boil these together with sage leaves for about twenty minutes. Add alum to the tea after it is strained—one level teaspoon of alum to a quart of tea. Drink about two big tablespoonfuls of the tea every morning and every night, about twelve hours apart on the doses. It’ll cure asthma.
FLORA YOUNGBLOOD
Bedbugs
We’d tote our bed frames and the slats outsi
de and scald them every month or two in boiling water and lye soap. The bedbugs laid their eggs in that wood. Then we would change the straw in the ticks every fall. Whenever they would start threshing the wheat, we’d take them empty bed ticks and boil them real good. Then when they got dry, we’d stuff them with that fresh wheat straw.
FLORA YOUNGBLOOD
Apply kerosene liberally to all parts of the beds.
DIANE FORBES
Bleeding
Bandage the cut real tight. Tie a cord below and above the cut and repeat Ezekiel 16:6. The blood will stop immediately. Take the cords off and cleanse the wound with warm salty water. Use just enough salt to purify the water. Then bandage.
FLORA YOUNGBLOOD
Put kerosene oil on the cut.
ANNIE MAE HENRY
To stop bleeding, take soot from the back of a fireplace in an old chimney and press against cut. Wash the soot out when blood clots or it will leave a scar.
AMY TRAMMELL
Blood Pressure
Sarsaparilla, or “sasparilla tea,” is good to correct blood pressure.
AMY TRAMMELL
Blood Purifier
When you hit your hand or cut your arm or anything, and it gets infected instead of healing up, you need a blood purifier. Mix just a tiny bit of alum and saltpeter together in water and drink it. That purifies the blood.
Make a tea of either burdock roots, or spice wood in the spring.
AMY TRAMMELL
Blood Tonic
Buy a box of sulfur at the store and mix a small amount (about the size of a pinto bean) in a teaspoonful of honey. Take that teaspoonful and then drink a glass of water. We would do that every spring. Mama would fix it up and we’d all get purified up for summertime. That’s a tonic to purify your blood.
FLORA YOUNGBLOOD
Buy a box of sulfur at the store and mix a small amount (about the size of a pinto bean) in a teaspoonful of molasses. Take that teaspoonful and then drink a glass of water.
AMANDA TURPIN
Make a tea of bloodroot.
AMY TRAMMELL
Soak rusty nails in water and drink the water.
AMANDA TURPIN
Boils/Risings/Sores
For boils, grind up green walnut leaves or the hull of walnuts (the big green outside hull) with table salt, using one teaspoon of salt to a half cup of ground-up leaves or walnut hulls. Make a poultice. It will draw the boils out.
FLORA YOUNGBLOOD
Make a poultice of the houseleek plant and apply to boil.
MRS. C. E. PINSON
Mash up a rotten apple, place on the rising and tie a cloth around it.
FLORENCE CARPENTER
This recipe for “Green Salve” is good for boils or any kind of sore.
One ounce beeswax
Two ounces mutton tallow
One ounce olive or sweet oil
One ounce oil of amber
One ounce verdegrease [verdigris]
One ounce resin
One ounce oil of spike
Simmer first four ingredients together; add verdegrease and resin, well powdered; then add oil of spike.
MRS. ALBERT ECKSTEIN
Make a mixture of kerosene, turpentine, Vaseline and old-time soap.
CONNIE MITCHELL
Make a salve made of heart leaves gotten out of the ground in the woods. Boil the leaves. Add lard and turpentine. Continue to boil until the mixture gets thick. Put the salve on sores as needed.
FLORENCE CARPENTER
Peel down outer bark of slippery elm sapling. Scrape off the inner bark and put those scrapings on a cloth and bind that on the risin’; or put piece of fat pork on it; or put a poultice on it made from bread and milk.
HAZEL LUZIER
To pull the core out of a risin’, fill a bottle with very hot water. Let it sit a minute, then empty. Put the mouth of the hot bottle over risin’ and hold it there.
ELIZABETH ENDLER
Buy some flaxseed meal. Make a poultice and put on risin’.
ELIZABETH ENDLER
This salve is good for anything that you want to draw, or any kind of sore. If you stick a nail in your foot or cut yourself or stump your toe, it’s to draw out the infection.
The main ingredient in the salve is beef tallow. Make this by taking the fat off the beef just as you would a hog. Then put a little water in a pan or pot to keep the fat from sticking as it cooks, add the fat and cook it, stirring it so it doesn’t burn. After all the fat has melted out, strain out all the cracklings and set the tallow aside to harden. The tallow will keep for years in a jar.
When ready to make salve, take out a palmful of the tallow and add a level teaspoon of brown sugar, a level teaspoon of salt, and a few drops of turpentine. Mix all ingredients thoroughly together and then add a few drops of camphor oil.
PLATE 26 After Amanda Turpin had gathered the ingredients she needed to make her salve for us …
PLATE 27 … she mixed them in the palm of her hand.
Make the camphor oil by getting two blocks of camphor gum at the drugstore and chipping it up in a pint of moonshine whiskey. I think that the camphor is the medicine. Whiskey just keeps the camphor gum. You know, camphor gum will evaporate just by itself.
After the salve is mixed up, apply it directly to the wound and cover it with a bandage. If you put it on at night, let it stay all night. If it’s not done enough work by morning, put on another application and let it stay all day.
AMANDA TURPIN
Burns
Mix two tablespoons soda with one and one-half tablespoons water, put that on a rag and wrap the rag around the burn.
SAMANTHA SPEED
Use castor oil on burns.
ANNIE MAE HENRY
Put baking soda on the burn.
FLORENCE CARPENTER
The white of an egg and castor oil stirred up together is just as good a thing as you can put on a burn. Stops the pain and makes it heal up right quick.
ANNIE MAE HENRY
I can cure a burn in just a few minutes. Cut an Irish potato in two at the middle and lay the cut part of the potato against the burn. Bind that potato to the burned place with a handkerchief. In ten minutes, you can’t even tell you’ve been burned. That’s the truth. I’ve doctored myself. I know. The heat is gone. Let that potato stay there until it turns black. Then the place where the burn was will be as white as cotton. If you get that potato on there fast enough, it won’t even blister.
KENNY RUNION
Apple vinegar on minor burns will take out the fire. Or blow your nose and wipe the mucus on the burn.
ANONYMOUS
Sulfur will heal a burn after the fire is drawn out.
GLADYS NICHOLS
I blow out fire using a Bible verse. You blow right direct on the burn and just talk the fire out of the burn. If you get it when it first happens it won’t blister, but if you have to wait it will make a water blister. Then I would put sewing machine oil on it. Just bind it up in sewing machine oil and that would take care of it.
It is the seventh child that can blow fire out, my daddy learned me. I haven’t told my seventh child. I’d better do that. I should write those verses off and leave ’em with somebody. [See The Foxfire Book.]
FLORA YOUNGBLOOD
Chapped Hands
Rub hands in a mixture of homemade soap and cornmeal. Bring the soap and meal to a good lather.
BEULAH FORESTER
My father made an ointment for that out of persimmon bark. Scrape persimmon bark down and cook it down to where it would be good and strong. Then put sweet milk or cream in it. Keep it rubbed on your hands and lips. I don’t make it like I used to. When my children were all at home and the Depression was on I made lots of it.
FLORA YOUNGBLOOD
Use warm mutton tallow. When the sheep are killed, the fat is taken out and fried. The tallow is made from the grease.
ANONYMOUS
Chewing Gum Out of Hair
Take a half a teaspoon of p
eanut butter and smear it together with the chewing gum until the gum dissolves. Then wash out.
HELEN WALL
Just wet a cloth with kerosene and strip it down the hair (from the roots to the ends) and it’ll take every bit of that out. Kerosene won’t hurt the hair and it won’t hurt the scalp if it gets on it.
FLORA YOUNGBLOOD
Chills
Drink a strong tea made from the leaves of pennyroyal.
AMY TRAMMELL
You would buy quinine from the drugstore. You would put just what would lay on the point of a knife blade in a teaspoon of water and stir it up. Take that and it would break the chills just like that.
FLORA YOUNGBLOOD
Colds
Make an onion poultice and put on your chest to break up a cold. To make the poultice, fry chopped onions in grease until well done. Put on a cloth and lay on the chest while still warm.
MRS. C.E. PINSON
When making tar, the flow of pine tar itself is preceded by some white smoke, then water. (See Foxfire 4.) A swallow of this water is good for a cold. The pine tar itself, rubbed on the chest, will loosen up a cold.
DAN HAWKES
Chew the leaves and stems of peppermint.
Foxfire 9 Page 6
