Foxfire 9

by Foxfire Fund, Inc.

  Daddy and his brothers also were all sorghum syrup makers. Everybody back then made a sorghum patch. That was the sweetener. They cooked different things and sweetened ’em with that sorghum syrup. We had from twenty to sixty gallons of that syrup all the time. Daddy was a good syrup maker. Uncle Jeff Nelson was too. He’d pass for a brother to ol’ Will Geer that played on the Waltons. Mustache and everything. Just about his size, and talked like him. Sam Rampley also had a little ol’ syrup mill there—one horse—but he didn’t know how to make syrup. Him and his boy started makin’ it. Uncle Jeff went by and he seen they was getting it ready to make, drawing it off, you know. Uncle Jeff said, “By junk,” them was his words, “by junk, he’s puttin’ fire under that pan and got it cookin’, making pretty syrup.” Uncle Jeff was going to the woods cuttin’ cordwood.

  He come back that evening late and Sam said, “Done got done makin’ syrup, Jeff. I made two barrelfuls.” And a few days later he come up there and told him, say, “Jeff, I want you to go down and see what’s wrong with my syrup. It’s blowing the damn stoppers out of the barrel.” [laughter] He drawed some off and it was just ready to ferment. It’d all soured and went to workin’. [laughter] He said Sam had to pour it all out. He hadn’t cooked it long enough.

  We was used to that ol’ homemade syrup, you know, but George Adams’ daddy come in [one time] with a bucket of that clear maple syrup. We never had seen none of that. He had a biscuit [with some of that syrup] at mealtime. And that just bugged him to death. He just couldn’t get that off of his mind. He slipped in the house—there wasn’t nobody in there—and looked for them big ol’ leftover biscuits, big ol’ catheads, you know. He decided he’d look around and see if he could find that syrup. By golly, there was a saucerful of it already poured out there and that was real handy. He was lookin’ over his shoulder, just like somebody stealing something, you know, and he busted that ol’ biscuit open and sopped it around [in that saucer] and sopped it good. He got nearly every bit that was in that saucer and crammed it in. Had to get this done and get away from there, or get in trouble because they didn’t allow the kids running in and getting into stuff. You was gonna have what was left from dinner for supper! I guess he had done swallowed a whole lot of it before he realized what was a-going on. One of his sisters had loaded up that saucer with castor oil. It looked just like that Karo syrup. He never did find out which sister it was and that’s the reason she’s still living! He ain’t found out yet.

  Sometimes they mixed that sorghum in with remedies, too. I remember during World War I when that flu epidemic broke out. They was lots and lots of people that died with it. I never will forget—I was seven years old. My brother and I was going to the store. It was pretty cold. ’Fore we left, Mother said, “Wait a minute.” Said, “Let me give you ’uns something here to keep you from having the flu.” Now I like sorghum syrup, but she liked to have turned me against it that time. She stirred up some sulfur in that sorghum syrup and give it to us to keep us from having the flu. And I cried halfway down that bank. When I got back I said, “Ma, I might take the flu and die, but,” I says, “be damned if I want any more of that sulfur and syrup. I’ll tell you that!” But that was better than that asafetida some people used. They’d put a little ball of that around your neck and thought you never would have the flu. It smells like a wild onion that rigor mortis has done set in. [laughter] You buy it at the drugstore. I’ve seen ’em wear that little ball around their neck and that ball would be just black as that coal in there and you couldn’t stay around ’em! Yeah, you couldn’t stay where they was at!

  But anyhow, back then there was more syrup mills than there was blacksmiths, ’cause everybody had from a half acre to a acre of syrup cane. Maybe one mill [to crush the cane] would be sittin’ in one section and maybe eight miles on, someone else would have another one. They were just scattered around, and people shared them. Usually the mill would be mounted on a wagon so they could take it around, but it would want to rock around with you if you was feeding it heavy. So up in 1934, the last year I farmed, we had about three quarters of an acre of syrup cane, and me and my uncle tried something different. We built a wood form, and put bolts in it, and poured a concrete slab that weighed, I guess, four ton. Then we bolted that mill down on it and got it ready and my daddy started makin’ syrup as pretty as you ever seen. Hell, they kept haulin’ [cane] in from five to seven, eight miles from there. He made eleven hundred gallons that year right there. Never moved. [The mill] was right on the creek, plenty of water. And that mill would flat go, too. It was a big two-horse mill is what it was, and we had a good copper-pan evaporator.

  Daddy was also a fiddle player. He didn’t know one note of music from the next, but boy, he could drag that bow over them right along, and that man picking the banjo staying right up with him. I was little and I ain’t never heard anything on television that beats it to me. Not just because he done it. He had a fiddle and he bought it in 1895 in May, secondhand, and he got the case, the fiddle, and the bow all for $2.75. My daddy’s name was Bill and my youngest grandson’s Bill, too. Bill will be ten years old in November and my sister and [the rest of the family] wanted Bill to have that fiddle so my daddy had worked on it, put a neck on it, after he’d got up eighty years old. I told the boy I wanted to carry [the fiddle] up to Blairsville to Mr. King, a repairman, and I carried it up there and he reworked it and it looked like new. It was a Hoff made in Germany in the early 1800s. And he told me, “Don’t let nobody play it if you don’t want to sell it.” Give $2.75 for it when [my daddy] bought it and give $215 to get it reworked.

  Dad could do anything he took a notion to. He didn’t have the education, but he could figure stuff out in his head. He used to make barrels, and he made a good many baskets. When I was nine years old, he bought himself a set of tools and put a blacksmith shop up here on the farm. I was seven years old when I first seen a [black-smith] shop. Daddy and another feller was doing some work there and it scared the hell out of me—those sparks flyin’. I ran like a turkey! But after he set his own shop up, my job was cranking that blower for him. He didn’t run the shop regular for the public—it was mostly farm repair work—but he’d do some work for the neighbors maybe on a Saturday or when it was rainy weather. He’d sharpen their plows, do some mule shoeing; first one thing, then another. But he was smart. I’ve seen him take a damn piece of cast iron and take a file and melt it a little bit and lay it in the fire and get it hot and put a little borax on it and take a damn piece of brass and braze it together. It was like using a brazing rod, but they didn’t have brazing rods back then, sixty-five years ago. I never did try it. Hell, I couldn’t a’ done it. Never did try it. Don’t know whether I could do it or not. I got started in blacksmithing myself when I was twelve or thirteen. I’d make stuff like wagons for me and the neighbor boys to play with on Sunday, and if we tore it up that Sunday, I’d rework it and have it ready for the next Sunday again. Then later on, why all I studied about was [wanting to] build houses more than anything. Back then, if a carpenter made a trade to do a job for people, they had to take two toolboxes. Everything was handmade, planes and all, you know. They’d load up [all their tools] in two toolboxes and you had to go get ’em in a two-horse wagon and carry ’em maybe twenty miles, fifteen, whatever it was. [The carpenters] stayed with ’em while they were doing their job and went home on weekends maybe. They didn’t need no greenhorn so I stayed in blacksmithing. When I was seventeen, I started shoeing for the neighbors. I’d shoe a mule for ’em and make a little spending money. I worked with one old man, fifty-one years old, and did all his work during the Depression. His name was Mr. Cagle. He was a tall man but he drew over when he walked. He had done farming before he was a blacksmith. I was twenty-one years old. I came to work when the sun came over the courthouse and stayed all day. He paid me a lot of money. He gave me three dollars a week and my board. I did some tempering of steel for him and helped him shoe. He died of cancer when he was eighty-one.

  The yea
r I was twenty-two years old, I bought my own shop. I’d worked a lot in that shop that summer, so Uncle Bob come easing across one morning. He said, “Jud, would you love to buy a blacksmith shop?”

  I said, “If I did, it wouldn’t do me no good. I haven’t got the money.”

  He said, “Ah, God, I’ve got it.” Says, “Dock and them want two hundred and fifty dollars for that,” and my daddy said, “Offer ’em two hundred for it; Dock’s a-hurtin’ for a little money.” That was a whole lot—a hundred dollars was—in 1934 and ’35. Well, Uncle Bob said he’d pay a hundred for his half and I paid a hundred for my half. So Dock agreed on [the price] and we went down and bought it. I opened up for a year over there and then moved up here the last of 1934.

  I got married in May of 1934. Her name was Jenny. We only knew each other for about three years before we got married. She was two or three years older than me. She was a schoolteacher.

  I built a log [building for a] shop up here, me and my daddy. I done a lot of work in it for the neighbors there. Some of ’em had wagon work to do and buggy wheels to fix back then. I started on the first wagon work then. My daddy couldn’t figure out [the dimensions] in his head, [but] he could do most anything with wood. Most of the neighbors got me to do their mule shoeing. Some people come from two counties [away]. [I also did some carpentry work.] I built my first house that summer. I was twenty-three years old. I worked twelve hours a day and got $2.40. I got twelve cents an hour on it.

  I went to Jacksonville, Florida, in ’41 to do blacksmithing for the Navy. I stayed there till ’45. It was just like a big farm, more than anything. I made a bunch of anchors and hooks and different things. I helped make the lids that went on the underground tunnels there. I bet you we made five thousand of them damn things. Wasn’t any trouble to make.

  Most of the money I made [blacksmithing] would come in in the fall of the year ’cause ninety percent of the farmers works from spring to the fall, and they’ll have their work done in the summer and come in in the fall and pay [their bill]. A few of ’em forgot to pay in the fall. Anyway, it’s a pretty happy life, real hard work but I enjoyed it. I didn’t weigh but about 165 pounds. It didn’t matter though. It never did get too rough.

  I could a’ been half rich now. I throwed away enough old farm equipment to’ve sold. I never did think it’d be this way. By gosh, I ain’t a-braggin’, but when I started out there at first we had so damn much competition we had to be pretty good if we did anything. Course, there was right smart of it to do. I guess blacksmithing was a real important part of the community back then.

  PLATE 184 A typical afternoon in jud’s shop will find good friends like George Muse (left) and Wallace King (center) and Sammy Joe Dobson (right) visiting and watching the activity.

  PLATE 185 Jud and his friend, George Adams.

  PLATE 186 The sign that hangs over the door of Jud’s shop.

  PLATE 187 Jud begins the process of making a wagon by first making the four wheels. He says, “The wheels take more time on them than any other part. They’re the big part of it.”

  For this wagon, he found the seasoned white oak he needed for the hubs in the woodyard of his neighbor, Wallace King. “I believe this wood will work. It’s good oak and it’s good and dry. That’s the main item on it.”

  PLATE 188 Using a band saw, he cuts each piece to approximately fourteen inches in length, longer than the final hubs will be, but Jud says, “I just trim ’em off a little long. Got to cut ’em again anyway.” Then he removes the bark with a drawknife.

  PLATE 189 Now Jud removes as much of the excess wood as he can before mounting the hub in the lathe for the final turning. Here, he prepares to square the block to ten and one-half inches…

  PLATE 190 … cutting off the sides with a band saw.

  PLATE 191 Now, with a square, he marks each block to its final length of ten inches…

  PLATE 192 … cuts each squared block to the desired length…

  PLATE 193 … and locates and marks the center of each.

  PLATE 194 With a nail set, he punches a shallow indentation into the center of each hub, and then draws a circle eight and one-half inches in diameter on each end with a compass.

  PLATE 195 With the diameter established, Jud now can remove additional excess wood from the corners at a forty-five-degree angle with his joiner. It would be extremely difficult to turn on the lathe with the corners left on.

  PLATE 196 Now Jud mounts a hub in his lathe, and before starting to turn it, he removes some of the remaining corners and rough spots with a drawknife.

  PLATE 197 Because it is nearly impossible to cut off the ends of each block exactly square with a band saw, Jud now uses a cutoff tool to square up the ends.

  PLATE 198 The end of the hub that will go next to the wagon and hold the bearing is turned to six and one-half inches in diameter. Note that he has also scribed a pair of lines around the belly of the hub. The mortises for the spokes will be fitted in between these lines.

  PLATE 199 With the diameter of the end established, he shapes the ends to hold the iron hub bands, tapers the hub’s shoulders, and removes the hub from the lathe.

  PLATE 200 When all four hubs have been shaped, Jud paints melted paraffin wax on the ends to try to prevent checking (splitting) since the wood for these hubs had only seasoned for a year.

  PLATE 201 The two-and-one-quarter-inch mortises for the hub’s spokes must now be cut. He subdivides the space between the scribed lines into twelve equal parts for the front hubs and fourteen for the rear, using a small traveler to get the circumference and dividers to establish the dividing lines. With a center punch, he makes three small holes on each dividing line to guide the drill he will use to cut out the mortises.

  PLATE 202

  PLATE 203 Now he drills three holes into each mortise, drilling all the way into the center of the hub, which will eventually be hollow. Before machinery, Jud says this job was “started with a brace and bit and finished out with a hand chisel. It was hell, but they done it.” Note the box Jud has fashioned to hold the hub steady while he drills.

  PLATE 204 After the holes are drilled, he puts the hub back in the lathe to hollow out the end that goes next to the wagon in order to seat the bearing.

  PLATE 205 Now, using a two-and-one-half-inch expansion bit, he drills out the center of each hub. This hole will eventually be tapered and enlarged to three and one-half inches in the end that will hold the bearing.

  PLATE 206

  PLATE 207 With a mortising bit, he drills out each mortise to its size of five-eighths inch by two inches.

  PLATE 208 At this stage the four hubs are beginning to take shape. The two on the left are for the front wheels, the distance between their mortises contrasting sharply with the distances between the rear hubs’ fourteen mortises.

  PLATE 209 Jud fashions the inner bands from quarter-inch by three-quarter-inch steel. Using a rawhide string to obtain the circumference of the hub where the band will go, he cuts them just short of the exact length they need to be. Then he scarfs their ends for forge welding. When scarfed and welded, the band will fit tightly around the hub.

  PLATE 210 The ends of the inner hub bands are now forge-welded together …

  PLATE 211 … and then driven over a cone mandrel to true them up and make them perfectly round.

  PLATE 212 Now the outer hub bands, measuring three sixteenths by one and a quarter inches, are cut, rounded and their ends forge-welded together.

  PLATE 213 As each weld is completed, Jud dresses up and rounds each band at the weld’s seam before taking it to the cone mandrel.

  PLATE 214 The bands finished, Jud heats one of the outside bands to approximately 900 degrees Fahrenheit on a black heat.

  PLATE 215 Then he takes it to one of the hubs, partially suspended in a barrel of water by four pieces of scrap lumber, lines it up against the end of the end of the hub…

  PLATE 216 … and begins to drive the heated band onto the hub. As he does so the wood catches fire.<
br />
  PLATE 217 Lifting the hub out of the water onto a block, he finishes driving it home as the flames surround it. Then he flips the hub over into the barrel of water, where the shock of the change in temperature causes the band to shrink immediately and tightly around the hub’s end.

  PLATE 218 This process is repeated four times for each hub.

  PLATE 219

  PLATE 220 Now that the hubs are banded so they cannot split, Jud finishes hollowing them out with a rounding chisel he made for this purpose.