My earliest memory was when we moved from Hightower to Scataway. We had a bunch of chickens and had to catch ’em after night. I was just a little bitty boy and one got away. She flew away off down in the pasture. I mocked how she flew and Poppy and them laughed at me ever since. They’d mock me. They’d say “Flawk! Flawk! Flawk!”
We moved to Scataway for Vogel Lumber Company. They give us free rent to watch for fires and keep them from burning the fences up. Fire’d get out then and burn the rail fences up. If it got out and burned the fences, we went and asked people in to help us rebuild them. They all come in and built them back and we give ’em their dinner. That’s all they got out of it.
Our neighbors at Scataway were Hershal Barnes, John Beck, and Paul Shook. They was real good neighbors.
Our house looked like a twenty-four-foot square. The living room and bedroom was all in together, one big old square room. Then they had a little hallway that run out to the kitchen. It was open, just covered overhead. I guess we had four or five beds. Mommy and Poppy slept in the one right up by the fire chimney. I believe there was four more beds in the back. We kept warm about as good as anybody, I guess. We had plenty of cover but when you got out from under it, you got cold. We had us something like a straw tick for our mattresses. It was sewed up all round but for a little piece in the middle. Mommy would reach under there ever’ morning and stir that straw where you laid of a night and had packed it down. She’d reach in there at that hole and she’d stir it up. We got our straw changed ever’ fall and used it for a year. When the thrashers come around and thrashed rye, then we’d go get us some new straw and put in the sacks. We’d have us one with one of them sheets on it. I’ve waked up many a morning, the sheet kicked down and me a-laying in the middle of the bed in a pile of straw. That’s right. I’d wake up, awful pitiful, a-laying in that straw.
My mommy swept the floor with a homemade broom that she made from broom sage she’d gathered. She quilted all winter long when she didn’t have nothing else to do. She had her quilting frame right in the middle of the old big house. Of a night, she’d take the strings and roll up all four corners of the frame where we could walk under it. The next morning, she’d roll ’em back down and start a-quilting. We was mostly all gone and she had plenty of room then. She’d quilt ’em in fans. She’d start and go around like that, and get a little bigger. They called that fans. She bought her thread for a nickel a spool, a great big spool of cotton thread. She’d get her material from wore-out clothes, the ones we had that had holes in ’em and we couldn’t wear no more.
She’d take knitting needles and knit socks, sweaters, and things like that. She had an old spinning wheel. Lord, I’ve seen her stand on one leg all day long. She’d get started and she’d go to pulling that cotton, not a thing in the world but cotton. She had cards and she’d roll it out in rolls about fourteen inches long. She’d put one end of that cotton to that old spinning wheel. Then she’d turn the big wheel with her finger. She would pull that back and when she got through with that, she’d tie another one to the end of it. She’d keep it a-going all the time. Eventually she’d get a great old big spool of thread wound up. She’d take the thread and fix socks. You talk about something good, now they’s good! If she could get ahold of enough cotton, she would put it in a quilt. It was hard to get cotton then. They would put a lining on it and that made it a lot heavier quilt than they make now.
We went barefooted all through the early summer. From this time of year on, we was barefooted. We’d do well if we got a pair of shoes a year—old brogans made out of leather, leather bottoms, leather tops, and ever’ time you took a step, they’d skreak. They wasn’t thick like they are now. That pair of shoes was the only one you got till spring, but of course they was tough. They was slick and you’d fall down. You couldn’t walk in the mountains hardly a’tall with them. I weared ’em till the sole come off. I’ve seen old men with a hole that was yarned together. I’ve wore ’em myself that way.
In the wintertime, we had lye gums. That’s a big old round hollow log that’s set up on boards and we’d take all of our ashes [from the fireplace] and put in that gum. Then in spring of the year, we’d take water and pour it in the gum. The water’d go down through to get the strength out of the ashes and drip into a bucket. That’s what you call lye.
We made our soap from that lye, made it kind of like jelly. Now some people made it where they would let it dry and they could cut it out into big bars. We always made it just like jelly.
We cooked our hominy with lye to take the husk off the corn kernels. It’d leave the pure stuff, you know. After supper, we liked to set by the fire with us a saucer and ever’ one of us would eat one grain at a time of that hominy with our fingers. Didn’t make any difference. We’d eat all we wanted.
Mommy had a washpot setting on some rocks out under an apple tree where it was shady when she’d wash clothes. She had a great old big stump there for a battling bench. She’d boil clothes for a little while and then she’d put them out on that stump. She had a great big old heavy paddle that Poppy made for her. She’d beat them clothes, and the dirt and water would just fly ever’where. She’d beat ’em and then she’d rub ’em sometimes. At first she didn’t have a scrubboard, but eventually they got one. She had to rub ’em out with her hands. Then she would rinse them through clear water and hang them out on the line. They’d be dingy. They didn’t use any bleach. Sheets and stuff like that would look dingy. They ’as supposed to be white. They was made of thick, rough stuff.
She’d get a telephone line and make a clothesline out of that. My daddy went to John H. Corn’s to work and they had a telephone. Ever’ once in a while somebody’d steal somebody’s telephone wire and make ’em a clothesline. We’d have to get the company to come and tie it back together. They’d take the rest down and give it to someone to take home and use for a clothesline.
One time I climbed that apple tree over Mommy’s washpot. I fell out of the tree and hit my head on that pot. It had a broke place in it and I hit it right there. Mommy was pregnant with Maggie, so Birdie run out there and she wouldn’t let Mommy see the blood. You can still feel the cut, where it dented my skull or something. I didn’t know how bad it was, so I didn’t go to the doctor. I just bound it up and went on. I was just up there climbing around boy-like and fell out. Maybe a limb broke with me or something. I don’t know what happened.
People was a whole lot healthier then than they are now. We never was sick, hardly. When we needed medicine, we had turpentine, castor oil, and salts. I didn’t like castor oil—Lord, no! Just as sure as you started taking a bad cold, that’s when they give you some. They said castor oil and salts would work colds out of you. If somebody got cut and was bleeding bad, they would reach up in the back of the chimney to get some soot and put on it. We called the soot in the chimney “cobweb.” They used hog lard for burns and catnip tea for babies to break the hives out on them. When your stomach is out of shape, your lips are cracked, or you have fever blisters, dig up yellow root and chew it.
Mommy put a poultice or breast rag on my chest in the fall of the year, the first tisic spell I had, and it stayed there till spring. There was turpentine, lamp oil, salve, and different things in the breast rag. I had what they called the “tisics” [phthisis] when I was a young ’un. That’s in your lungs, where you can’t breathe. I’d have to go, “Ooook! Ooook!” all night long. You could hear me all over the house getting my breath. I’d pert’ near smother to death. Mommy would sit beside me on a straight chair that she’d whittled out rockers for. (She nailed ’em on that straight chair herself.) She rocked that chair all night many a night, sitting right by me.
Well, when I was about nine years old, I caught the whooping cough. They said it would kill me or cure me one. I got the whooping cough and it cured me. Yep! Never did have the tisics no more. I reckon you just cough it all out. You’d cough for three weeks, then you’d whoop for three weeks. You’d whoop ever’ time you’d cough. You had it
about nine weeks. That stopped the tisics, I reckon. I just coughed it all out.
Way back, they was these little young children that had polio. If they ’as one in the settlement anywhere got it, Mommy’d tie a piece of garlic around our necks. It hung around our necks and it stunk like ramps. Stunk awful, but we wore it till the disease died down—a long time. We thought it kept the disease away. We didn’t know whether it did or not, but it sure did stink bad enough.
People don’t do nothing now for you when you’re sick. Back then, somebody’d have the typhoid fever and their corn would grow up. Neighbors would come in with plows and hoes and weed it out till they got well. It was like building a fence. People’d come in and have a workin’. Build your fence back if the fire got in it and burnt it down. All they got was their dinner. They had a good time, too! When we built the fences, my daddy was plowing these steers. Them steers would drag the logs in close to the fence, where they’d split the logs into rails. They’d split ’em and lay ’em up. Some would be a-splittin’, some a-draggin’, and some a-layin’ ’em up, zigzag like.
We lived hard. We cooked on a wood stove, and didn’t have any electricity till about thirty years ago. We’d go to the store and get oil for our lamps. I think the oil was twenty cents a gallon. We’d use pine knots we got from rotted trees to build a fire with and to use as light when we eat supper after dark. We’d stick one in a corner of our old rock fireplace to see by of a night. It was just as rich as it could be. It’d bust into splinters—just like burning kerosene.
We had nothing but an old plow, hillside turner, and a pair of steers and hoes with homemade handles in ’em for the gardens. We didn’t have a rake then.
When we were in the mountains for the Vogel Lumber Company, we dug up sassafras trees, peeled the bark off and toted it out in a sack, an’ then scraped the rough part off of it. It brought five cents a pound at the grocery store. We’d bake a cake of flour bread, spread it open and put sugar in it, and take that to the mountains with us—eat that and drink water out of a cold spring. That’s what we had for dinner while we was digging bark.
We couldn’t afford to eat turkey and we couldn’t afford to eat many chickens. What few chickens we had, we had to get the eggs they laid. We’d take the eggs to the store and buy sugar, salt, and coffee with ’em. Couldn’t eat eggs except only on Easter Sunday. About two weeks before Easter, we’d steal the eggs. When the old hen laid, we’d go get them eggs and we’d hide ’em. By the time Easter come, we’d have a pretty good bunch. We’d boil ’em and we’d color ’em with broom straw. It’d just color ’em yellow-looking. That’s all the coloring we had.
In the summertime, we had vegetables. Mommy would make “leather britches.” That’s dried beans. She’d take a pumpkin, cut round rings out of it, peel it, hang it on a stick, put it out in the sunshine, and let it dry. That was dried pumpkin we had in the wintertime. You could put a piece of fat meat in there, cook it with it, and that meat was just as sweet as it could be. That pumpkin made it sweet. That was the best meat ever I eat.
She wouldn’t make jelly as much as apple preserves, and she’d make something else out of apples, like apple butter. We’d go to the creek and get fox grapes and make fox grape juice. If you got some flour bread, you could make you a pie for dinner. We’d pick huckleberries. If the woods was burnt off one year, the next year you never saw the like of the huckleberries in your life that would be there. You can’t find ’em now since the woods haven’t been burnt. I don’t know what causes them to grow. They just kill ever’ other thing out.
We had chestnut trees and persimmon trees. When persimmons get ripe, now, they’re good. That’s what ’possums eat, persimmons. We had those little bitty fall grapes. They was extra good. We made them into some kind of a jam, seeds and all. What we lived on all winter was syrup, molasses. My daddy and granddad made the syrup. My granddad had a mill. Ever’body from Scataway brought their cane there to have it made up into syrup. They’d skin the cane by hand. Then they had an old thing made like a small shovel with holes in the bottom of it. They’d skim that top off the cooking syrup and pour it in a hole in the ground near the furnace, all that old green skimmings. I’ve stepped in it, a lot of times. We used to sow rye and make rye bread. It was black. We eat cornbread for breakfast. I didn’t know what flour bread was for a long time. We’d have it sometimes on Sunday mornings. That was the only time we had flour bread. And we used to parch corn. We didn’t have no popcorn. You would take a skillet and parch big grains of corn in it. It got real brown and chewed easy. It was good.
We’d eat poke salad and sowchy. Sowchy comes off the creek banks. It’s about the first thing that comes up on the creek banks in the spring. I’ve got a sister whose birthday is in March. She never has failed to get a mess of sowchy salad for her birthday. I bet she does it yet. We’d go to the creek and pick it. Boil it, and then take it out, put it in grease and fry it. It’s extra good.
We had ramps. They smelled rougher than a onion. We’d find them way back in the mountains in what’s called the Ramp Cove. We’d eat them early in the spring. They tasted awful good. They was like a onion but the scent! You could smell ’em for two or three days. We’d fry ’em or eat ’em raw, either one. People used to go to the woods, lay out all night and eat raw ramps for supper.
When we moved to Scataway, my daddy walked six miles every day to work. He’d get up of a morning at four o’clock and we’d take a bucket lid and set it in the middle of the table. We’d take rich pine knots, split ’em up, and light ’em up and lay them in that bucket lid to have light to eat breakfast by. He’d leave and walk that six miles, ditch all day for a bushel of corn or a dollar’s worth of meat. Never did get no money. It was always corn or meat. He’d bring the corn home and we’d take it to the mill, have it ground, bring it back and eat it.
Sometimes he’d get a pretty good piece of meat. It wasn’t very high then—about ten cents a pound. He’d get about a foot-and-a-half-square piece. The old man my dad worked for made lots of corn. He had a lot of hogs and he’d fatten and kill lots of ’em. While we’d kill about one or two, he’d kill a dozen. He paid people off in meat who worked for him. Never got a dollar off him. No way you’d get a dollar.
We had our hogs in the mountain wild. We’d take a good catch dog and he’d go out and catch one by the ear. He’d hold ’im till we got its hind legs and we’d tie ’im and drive ’im in home.
Us children didn’t work at nothing, only making a crop. Times were a whole lot worse then than they are now. We didn’t have no money, and couldn’t get none. If I got hold of a nickel or five pennies when I was a little boy, I thought I was rich! I’d hold ’em between my fingers like that. When I was a little older, I toted rock for an old man up on Bearmeat, by the name of Patrick Coleman. All day long we stopped up holes under the fence with rock to keep the pigs out of his corn and that night he’d give me a nickel. I toted rock all day long for a nickel, right up here on Bearmeat Creek.
I’d go to mill about once every two weeks. Toted a half bushel of corn over there. Sometimes me and Geneva would both go together. She’d take about a peck and me a half bushel. The miller wouldn’t be at the mill and we’d have to go hunt him up at his house. We’d go out there and holler at the gate till he’d start toward the mill. We’d go on back to the mill and we’d see him a-coming around the curve, just patty, patty. He was a great old big man. It’d take him half a hour to get to the mill.
The old corn was grinded by water. Every time the old rock wheels would go around, just a little meal would squirt out. It would take a half hour or better to grind a half a bushel of corn. Then we’d load it on our backs and back down the road we’d go. It’d take about all day, time we got there and back home.
People used to plant whole fields of just solid clay peas. When they got ripe, they was all to pick. We lived over in the holler, and we went and picked peas for ol’ man Will Holmes. The night before we left, we’d bake us a whole lot of sweet potatoes a
nd we took them with us. When dinnertime come, we’d go out to the spring. A woman would come down there and set us out a jug of buttermilk and give us some glasses. There we’d eat baked sweet potatoes and buttermilk for dinner. That’s all we had—ever’ bit. Now, that’s so. Then we’d go back and pick till night. We’d walk back to home and the next day do the same thing, till we got all the peas picked. Sometimes we’d pick two or three days a week. So many would get ripe, we’d have to go back and pick ’em again, just like beans.
When they got real dry, we’d spread out bed sheets or somethin’-r’nother, and take sticks and beat the hulls off of ’em. We called that thrashing seeds. We’d thrash ’em till the hulls would come off ’em. We’d have to do lots of ’em with our fingers, bust a hole in ’em. We would get paid a dollar a day.
[People in this area used to gather up turkeys and drive them, just like cattle, to a railroad station to ship them to market.] They’d drive ’em to Turkey Gap in one day. When it’d get night, the turkeys would go to flying up to roost. The people’d camp there with ’em all night. That’s the reason they call it Turkey Gap. The next day, they’d drive ’em on to Clayton. There was a railroad over there then, the Tallulah Falls Railroad. There wasn’t a way to ship them from here, but they’d be a lot of turkeys over here in Hiawassee. And they used to drive sheep, a herd of sheep, to market and they’d get ’em on the train. Don’t know how much they would bring. Not much, I’m satisfied.
We’d turn the cows out and we’d have to get started off huntin’ them about four o’clock in the evening. We had to hunt ’em every day. They’s some of ’em had bells on ’em, and they was some of ’em sharp enough to where they wouldn’t ring that bell. They’d lay down just on purpose. They’d be as easy as they could be and they never would ring the bell. Most of the time, though, you could hear the bell a-ringing. We’d have to go for miles and maybe not find ’em that evening. Then the next morning, we’d have to start back, drive ’em in and milk ’em. They wasn’t no Jerseys at that time. They come out later. These here was those big red-spotted cows, roans. Jerseys come out way after I was a grown man.
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