Sadie was about sixteen, and she had a younger sister, so Lonnie said, “You can’t have both of them.” I felt like I come around pretty good about asking for her. [I was twenty-four and still pretty bashful.]
Then I asked Sadie if she was ready to go get married. She said, “Yes.”
When we married, we didn’t go to nobody else’s house. I had me that house rented [with the store on the other end]. I had it already furnished, what little it was—a dresser, a old wooden bedstead my granddaddy had left me when he died, a stove; everything we needed. It wasn’t much, but then we didn’t have to have much.
We’ve got four kids living and three dead. When D.L. and Von was born, we had Mrs. Bradley, a granny woman, with them. Mrs. Bradley was with us when Maelane was born, but there was trouble and we had to go get Doctor Johnson. Now he was getting so old I had to drive him up there and back home. He wouldn’t hardly come out because he was so old. That cost about ten dollars then. Nowadays it would cost you about a thousand dollars, I guess, if you was to go to the hospital.
Only doctor I knowed when I was a little boy was Doctor Rice. He lived at Hiawassee, about eight miles from where we lived. Doc Rice was a great old big fellow, and he just wouldn’t go [way out on calls like Dr. Johnson would]. Dr. Johnson would do a whole lot more than Doc Rice had. He was a little bitty fellow. You’d go after him and he’d come any time of the night. He hardly got any money out of it. Sometimes people had it to pay and sometimes they didn’t. He never did do a thing about it.
During the Depression, we lived down here at Paul Foster’s. We tended his land on the halves. One time at dinner we had cornbread and that was everything we had. My daddy always said that he never would set down to dry bread, so he got his piece of bread and stood up and eat it. Now that’s the truth. You just don’t know how hard times was.
Then the WPA started building roads, and all us people would go out and work for ninety-eight cents a day. Then it got up to a dollar and twenty-eight cents a day. Me and my daddy-in-law would walk four miles from where his house was to the highway, and an old dump truck would come and pick us up. We’d set on the back of that truck, and it way down towards zero, and we’d ride to Soap Stone up there and work all day long. Then they’d take us back to where we got on the truck and turn us out and we’d walk back home that night. It’d be about dark when we got back home. We’d eat milk and bread for supper.
Then after that I hauled acid wood. I’d make three trips a day from here to Hayesville. I had men cutting for me, and when I’d get back from hauling a load, they’d have another load ready to go. They was a limb fell on me once doing that. It hit me right on top of the head. I had an old white horse, and I had to ride that horse plumb out to the truck (because) it couldn’t get in to where we was at. The doctor cut my hair off and bandaged me up, and the next morning I couldn’t turn my head. It come just in an inch a’ breakin’ my neck. That was dangerous work.
And then I hauled tanbark for a while. We’d take a spud and peel the bark off those chestnut oaks and stand that bark up against the logs to dry out so it wouldn’t mildew. Then we’d haul it out to the truck on a sled—hook the mule to it and pull it out to where we could get a truck to it.
But the job I enjoyed most was hauling fence posts. That was back twenty-five years ago. I hauled ’em for about fifteen years to people way down in Georgia. There was one place I hauled to where the boss man would make the colored men unload my truck. Fourteen of them would get on that truck at one time and they’d have those five or six hundred posts unloaded just in a few minutes. One of them asked me who done our work for us up in the mountains, and I said, “We do it ourself.”
He said, “White folks down here makes us do it.” They’d work from daylight to dark, and they’d be in debt from one fall to the next fall. When they wanted to eat at a café, they had to go to a window in the back and the cooks would give ’em their stuff there. My wife run a café while I was hauling posts, and she let ’em eat inside if they ever stopped there.
I made enough money off those posts to pay for that house we had on Scataway. Then I started selling produce about sixteen years ago. I sold that truck I had been hauling posts in for eight hundred dollars and took the money to Atlanta and got me a load of produce. I’d haul it in a pickup and set up right beside the highway. Times was a whole lot better by then. I was the only one selling produce (in this area), and people heard about me and would come and buy my load just in a few minutes. I’d make three trips a week to Atlanta and get all I could haul on that truck. I could get overripe bananas in fifty-pound bunches for seventy-five cents a stalk, and people would come in and buy them. I made good money on stuff like that. I had a man helping me, and he’d tend to the selling while I’d be gone to Atlanta for another load. That kept me busy till I made enough money to build this store out here.
PLATE 375 Mr. Dayton with some of his beehives behind his house.
One way or another, we always managed to make it. I told an old man here yesterday that this here was the happiest place in the whole world. You can listen to the television and hear of all kinds of floods and snow and [trouble] but right here it never gets too bad but what we can’t do something.
And I stay busy. When I have spare time, I go to Red McKinney’s store. He sells dopes [soft drinks], crackers, and tobacco. That’s about all he sells. And he makes ax handles. He started out making them years ago for a dollar a handle, but now he’s got up to three dollars a handle. Any time you go there, they’s five to ten or twelve men a-settin’ there talking. He’s got one of them great big old round potbellied stoves—the only one I know of in the [area]—and he keeps his fire in it in the winter. There’s an old man there who plays checkers with me. He’s eighty-two years old. Right here lately he’s courting somebody so we haven’t played in a while. We play rook there, too.
So I do that. And then I stay here and sell some stuff for beehives, and sell some china cabinets and washstands I make. I’ve got two solid oak china cabinets I made, and four solid oak washstands that are just like these old-timey washstands. And I take care of my own bees. I’ve had bees off and on all my life, but I don’t have but twenty-two hives now. I sold sixty-four hives last summer. I have had as high as a hundred and twenty hives. A super of sourwood honey brings me fifty dollars. My bees are going good. I’m looking for a swarm just any day. They’ll settle in a bush, and I’ll take a gum and shake ’em off in front of the gum and they go in there with the queen and start a family of their own. That’s the way they prosper, just like people.
So that’s the way I’ve lived. I’ve stayed all my life right back in the mountains. I wouldn’t live in a city if they was to give me the whole thing. I couldn’t sleep a wink. I wouldn’t live in Atlanta if you was to give it to me and make me keep it!
HAINT TALES AND OTHER SCARY STORIES
Storytelling is not an uncommon thing around here. It’s a tradition in my family that’s been passed down from generation to generation.
When I was a small child, my grandmother, Ruth Holcomb, would always tell me stories—day or night, it didn’t matter to her. Whenever I wanted to hear them, she’d sit down with me and tell panther stories or mad dog tales. Those were my favorites and she knew lots of them because she grew up seeing mad dogs in the neighborhood and hearing about panthers (pronounced “painters” by some people around here).
We always sat in the living room when she went to storytelling. She’d tell me story after story and have me so scared there was no way I’d even go into the next room by myself. Somebody would have to go with me.
I was always told if I saw a dog coming up the road, when I was waiting on the school bus of a morning, and it was foaming at the mouth, I was to either lie down in a ditch or stand real still and try not to breathe, so it would pass on by without biting me. I went to wait on the bus one morning and I practiced how to hold my breath and stand completely still. I think it’s silly now that I look back on it, but I sure believ
ed it then.
When I began editing these stories, I was at home lying in front of our heater on my stomach. Nobody was around me. Mom was taking a nap and Dad and my little brother were away. The television was off and it was real quiet. The house was popping—you know how a house does when it cook. And it was pitch dark outside. I got so interested in these stories that they were giving me a creepy feeling all over, and I finally decided I’d better put them away till the next day.
Kim Hamilton, Rosanne Chastain, and I collected most of them over the summer. Others had been told to Foxfire students over the years but have not been published previously. Tales about panthers and mad animals get inserted into someone’s conversation occasionally and don’t seem suitable as you’re putting together an article that deals specifically with some other subject. So this was an opportune time to pass along stories we’ve had tucked away in the files for a long time.
Every person that told us haint tales or scary stories was quite happy to share them. Each of them had his or her own unique and fascinating way of telling them. Lots of the stories have come from their own personal experiences and from what their parents and grandparents had passed on to them.
I still love for my grandmother to sit down and tell me these stories. I get terrifying feelings of panthers tearing through my skin or mad dogs snapping up at me, but I really know I’m quite safe with Granny.
Put yourself back in time and let your imagination roam as you enjoy these stories. Can you see a panther getting after you or a mad dog biting at you? What would you do?
DANA HOLCOMB
PANTHER TALES
MARGARET NORTON: They used to have real panthers here, but I never have seen one. There used to be one up on the creek here long years ago before I come. There was a trail come up this mountain and they always said everybody was afraid to travel it after night. Said they could hear that panther walking right along with ’em. You’d be in the trail and it’d be down below, and it’d just be pat, pat, pat right along till you stopped to see about it or shine the light on it. It’d stop, too.
I’ve heard them tell that lots of times but I’m not afraid. I don’t go out after dark by myself.
JAKE WALDROOP: Well, I see’d a painter at the Deep Gap. I’d been to Tallulah River and I was coming back. It was in the nighttime and I come through the Deep Gap to the head of Kimsey Creek on an old trail. They was a tree that had fell from right at the side of the trail, and lodged in another big tree. I guess you’ve see’d them that way, ain’t you?
I was coming down the trail and the moon was shining, and I seen this old gentleman [panther] just walk across the trail, and he come to where this tree had fell, and he just went walking out in them big limbs, you know.
I had an awful vicious Plott bitch with me [a dog usually bred for bear hunting]. And I didn’t have no gun, but I had a great big old dirk knife. I stopped and I looked at him and I says, “Well, ol’ fella, if you come down here, you may get me but I’m gonna get some of you.”
So I got my old knife out and I called Con, the dog’s name. She had a collar around her neck and I had a great long cord about six or eight feet long in my pocket and I tied that cord in the ring on her collar. I wanted us to both be together if that painter come in contact with us, so I just walked on by him and he laid out there wagging that old tail back’ards and forwards. I went on down a little piece and I looked back. I was about a hundred yards down. I’d keep my eyes on him as best I could, so he just kept laying there. I come to where there was a whole lot of underbrush and I went out of his sight. Well, I went on down a little ways where they was a branch [creek] coming down. And I had some whiskey, so I said, “I’ll take me a drink of whiskey.” I turned up the jug and took me two or three good swallows and put the stopper back in it. I set it down and laid down to get me some water out of the branch for a chaser. And just as my lips hit the water, Con growled and just jumped the full length of that cord and I heard that thing jump and I wasn’t thirsty no more! I got up and got my jug and down that trail I come, and it was a half of a mile to where my brother and another boy was waiting on me. And just as I got down close to the camp, that thing screamed right up on the ridge above me and they opened the door and come out and see’d me a-coming and they said, “What was you a-hollering about?”
I said, “I wasn’t. That was a cougar or a painter, whatever you want to call it.”
It went right back up over the Yellow Mountains and you ain’t never heard no such screaming in your life.
RUTH HOLCOMB: A long time ago, these people sent for this lady who was a midwife. The only way she had of getting to their house was to ride a horse. This panther came up behind her when she was riding to their house. She took off her scarf and throwed it down at him, trying to scare him off. It tore that scarf up and kept on coming. She kept her horse a-running and kept pulling off her clothes piece by piece, trying to stop that panther.
When she reached the house where she was going, she almost had all her clothes off and the panther was still right in behind her.
HARRIET ECHOLS: Now my mother said that when she was young, she knew some people and there was a new baby being born. Back then, they had home deliveries by midwives, you know. This neighbor woman was expecting herself, but she wasn’t too far along not to go help out. They had come to tell her they needed somebody to be there to help the midwife with the baby delivery, so she went around to her neighbor’s house.
The next morning when her husband got up, he was expecting her to be home for breakfast. He thought she and the midwife would walk back home together. She hadn’t come, so he started over there to see if everything was all right.
On his way, this panther was laying on the fence on the side of the road and it jumped at him. I don’t remember if he had a dog with him or what, but anyway he got away from it. Then he saw his wife. The panther was guarding her. It had killed her and had tore into her and ate the baby. My mother said that was true. Said all they found of the baby was one little hand and it was just mature enough to tell it was a hand. That panther was guarding the woman’s body because when it got hungry again, it’d eat her.
JAKE WALDROOP: When I was out in the state of Washington, why they was some Indians living there. And this Indian woman, she had a washplace about a hundred and fifty yards from her house. She had something on the stove cooking and she went from her washing to see about it. She run up to the house to see about her stuff she was fixing for dinner and left her baby sitting in a box down at the washplace. She said she heard a painter scream, and she wheeled and run back, and when she got there she heard it scream again, and it had took that baby off and eat it!
HARRIET ECHOLS: My mother told me this story about a panther, too. People had to ride horseback or go in wagons or buggies in those days, you know.
They were having this revival meeting, and this man and his wife had a pair of horses and they were riding them to church. They had a baby just big enough to sit up and hold onto one of them as they rode.
The minister said he’d eat dinner with them that day, and the woman rode back to the church with him that evening, but her husband couldn’t go. He had to do something else, but he knew she’d be safe coming on home without him. So she had a little ol’ dog that followed her when she rode off anywhere with the baby. After church that night, she didn’t think anything about riding back home by herself. She knew her husband would wait up and look for her.
He was sitting there on the porch when he heard her horse whinny and come tearing in home.
She said she’d come around a bend in the road where there was a big bank and a panther was up on that bank. It jumped down trying to land on the horse, but just missed. The dog had sensed it and kept it from jumping on the horse with the woman. She just wrapped the reins around the saddle horn and told the horse to go home, and she held to the baby. That horse just stretched out, carrying her home.
The man grabbed his gun. He’d felt like something was wrong and he had
his hunting dogs at the house. When the horse had got to the fence around the yard, it’d jumped it and her holding to the saddle with the baby. That panther was still right behind ’em. That little dog would jump at the panther whenever it’d jump at the horse.
The hunting dogs run out and scared the panther, and it run up on the haystack and got up on the stack pole. He had his gun and he shot it, and that’s all that saved her and the baby.
JAKE WALDROOP: One of my uncles, Millard Cruse, one time had been to a mill over in Tusquittee to get his corn ground. He had loaded up six or eight bushels of corn and went over there to the mill, and when he came back through Tunny Gap, why it was dark. And he said he heard this panther scream up on the ridge.
He had a big yoke of steers to his wagon and he had him a big long whip that he would whip them along with. And he said he began to whipping them steers when he heard that panther hit the back end of his wagon. He said he beat it off with that whip—beat it till it would get off. And them steers a-running! He said it would take a little bit for it to catch back on, but it followed him for two miles, trying to get in that wagon.
I heard my mammy and all of ’em tell me that the whole back end of the wagon bed—said there was his old claws where he had tore out planks and everything trying to get in. I reckon he was gonna eat my uncle. That’s all that was in the wagon except the cornmeal. That’s the only one I ever heard of attacking anybody around here.
ETHEL CORN: They said one liked to got Carrie Dillard one time, when they lived at the Lloyd’s Cove. I think she’d been to Highlands or somewhere. Everybody back then rode horseback and she was on a horse, and a panther jumped and just scraped the horse as he come down. That horse reared and started running, and they said that’s all that saved her. She was just a young girl and that horse a-rearing was all that saved her.
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