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36e2850fb64e7e0ff916377d13c3765e
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ralph Fickel's Mountain Notes
Description
An account of the resource
This collection contains Ralph Fickel's personal papers, maps, organizational brochures and newsletters, and ephemera. Included in his personal papers are his climbing journals, correspondence, employment records, and hand-drawn climbing routes and notes. The maps included in the manuscript collection are those with insufficient publication information to be cataloged or are hand-drawn maps. Other maps donated with the collection have been individually cataloged. Organizational brochures and newsletters include information on military parks and battlefields, national parks and forests, and the Sierra Club. The ephemera series primarily contains equipment catalogs, but also includes backpacking and camping guides, posters, and expedition and seminar catalogs.
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
Ralph Fickel was a rock and ice climber in North Carolina who attended Appalachian State University and served as a guide and teacher to beginner and more advanced climbers. His papers include his climbing journals, notes, and hand-drawn notes as well as correspondence, equipment catalogs, and organizational brochures. His interests in climbing, geography, and military history are represented in this collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fickel, Ralph
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a title="Guide to the Ralph Fickel Papers" href="http://collections.library.appstate.edu/findingaids/ac490" target="_blank">AC.490 Ralph Fickel Papers, 1970-2010</a>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright for the Ralph Fickel Papers site is held by Appalachian State University. The documents are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. [Identification of item], Ralph Fickel Papers, 1970-2010, W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Any commercial use of the materials, without the written permission of the Appalachian State University, is strictly prohibited.
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Number of pages
121
Scan date
11/3/2014
File size
76.8 MB
Checksum
alphanumeric code
70358385ec79781009a478f3fde2dde2
Scanned by
Tony Grady
Equipment
Epson Expression 11000XL
Resolution
300
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
490_MountainNotes_03_M
Title
A name given to the resource
Ralph Fickel's Mountain Notes, Book 3
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
6/19/1971-9/22/1973
Language
A language of the resource
English
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
document
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright for the Ralph Fickel Papers site is held by Appalachian State University. The documents are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. [Identification of item], Ralph Fickel Papers, 1970-2010, W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Any commercial use of the materials, without the written permission of the Appalachian State University, is strictly prohibited.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a title="Guide to the AC.490 Ralph Fickel Papers" href="http://collections.library.appstate.edu/findingaids/ac490" target="_blank">AC.490 Ralph Fickel Papers, 1970-2010</a>
Description
An account of the resource
Ralph Fickel's journal while hiking and rock climbing along the Appalachian Trail in the Smoky Mountains.
1971-72
Beech Gap
Deep Gap
Linville Gorge
Mt. Hardy
Pisgah
Sierra Club
Smoky Mountains
-
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AOHP
This is an interview with Mr. and Mrs. San Jones on the Castle
Ford Road on June 12, 1973. The interview is with Mike HcNeely.
Question:
Mr. Jones, would you tell me something about the farm you
were born on?
Answer:
It was sixty-five acres, X think.
I've cleared it here the
last few years, all ray life nearly. There's about as much land as you
can see.
Done everything that can be done to get it to work.
Qt
How many were there in your family?
A:
Nine.
Q:
How many brothers and sisters?
A:
Five girls and four boys.
Q:
Your dad had a lot of help on that farm, didn't he?
A:
Yeah, when we got up big enough. Oh we just growed corn, potatoes,
mostly theni"—-beans, and peas
anything like they do now.
little stuff like that.
Didn't grow
Pumpkins, just grow all the pumpkins and
string it and string it up and put it on posts and dry it.
Q:
Did you have any livestock?
A:
Yeah, we had hogs, cow or two and hog or two.
Chickens, geese,
guineas.
Q:
Were the cows and chickens used for meat, or were they used for
milk and eggs?
A:
No, just milk and eggs mostly.
Q:
How about your hogs?
Did you let them run free or did you keep
them in pens?
A:
No, we had a big lot back then.
That's about a acre a lot for *.-•
them to run in.
Q:
I was reading somewhere that some of the farmers let their hogs
run wild.
A:
My dad used to have forty—-one year had forty head.
Cholera got
�2.
amongst them, they was out in the mountains.
six.
That cholera111 kill them right now.
All died but five or
I've never seen but one--
I remember seeing them bring one old big hog in.
that far, I guess, out of his mouth.
His tusks was stuck
We had to cover that fellow,
you stick your finger, he'd make a dive at you, just like a snake
a-grabbing.at you.
mouth and all.
He'd eat you up.
Ah, they had him tied all over,
I don't know how in the world they ever, caught him.
I was just a little bitty fellow then, but I can remember it.
That's
been sixty year ago or more.
Q:
How often did they have a kill?
A:
Every fall.
They'd go out and shoot them down, with old war rifles,
anywhere they could find them.
Q:
How was the meat back then?
Was it as good as it is today?
A:
Well, I don't believe there was as any a fat hog, unless they got
fat on mash, they used to get awful fat on mash, Chestnuts and acorns,
Lord, there used to be worlds of them.
I picked one day, part of a
day after a big snow, about ninety pounds of chestnuts.
Early fall
and they'd been dry, you know, and they wouldn't open up, well they'd
open, but they couldn't pull out.
bring them out.
They'd take damp, you know, to
They come a snow, four or five inches, and I was on
Buffalo, and it went off a little while and boy, I mean to you, trees,
there was two or three growed up in one bunch there.
bushel or more under that.
I got a half
Boy I got all I could carry and I never
got started on them.
Mrs. J.:
Me and my sister used to pick them up, had four or five ^
trees out in the field.
went to school.
We'd pick them up in the morning before we
Sometimes we'd get three bushels.
Dad always took
produce down around Salisbury and down in there, he'd take them down
there and sell them for us.
�3.
Q:
Did you all use them around the house any?
A:
Mrs. J.
(Chestnuts, oh we'd eat all we wanted and sold bushels of
them.
Mr. J.
I used to climb trees to shake them out.
Mrs. J.
We never did shake them out. We'd just pick them up as we
went to school of the morning,when they started falling.
Q:
Was there a lot of fruit around here--berries?
A:
Mrs J.
Yeah, there used to be all kinds of berries, and apples,
and cherries.
Mr. J.
Anymore you don't get many a meal, once in a while. .. .
Now you couldn't get a cherry ham shuck for years around here.
Mrs. J.
Cherry trees just about all died.
And blackberries seem
they blight anymore, you can't get none of them.
Mr. J.
Hadn't picked a blackberry in four or five year, I don't reckon.
Mrs.J.
Sometimes you can get some wild strawberries if they don't
freeze.
Lot of time there comes a freeze about the time they're
blooming.
Don't get to bloom anymore.
Q:
How about huckleberries?
At
Mrs. J.
Are there any around here?
Ah, none to amount to anything, they used to be a good
many, back in the mountains, you know.
Mr. J.
We got, was it ninety-six quarts or something---over a hundred
one year?
Mrs. J.
About ninetyfseven^quarts, but the field that had so many in
it's been cleaned off, bulldozed out.
Mr. J.
Timber
them out, killed too lots pine
and everything. We found a bush one time, I don't know, I wasn't
with them.
Mrs. J.
Mr. J.
Had I went that day or not?
Yeah, you was off in the field here picking.
And one of my girls found it first, then one of my boys, and
she pickftd a gallon bucket! full and he finished his off on one bush.
�4.
The biggest huckleberries
it after that.
I always
there, you know.
Q:
I ever seen.
I never did see that many on
it up when I went over in
I think it's dead now, it's been destroyed.
How did they used to put up their fruits back in your mother's
day?
A:
Mrs. J.
Most the time they just canned them, cooked them and put
them in cans, sealed them.
Mr. J.
Now they made a lot of dried sweets too.
Mrs. J.
Of course apples, they dried a lot of apples, had dried
apples and they'd dry pumpkins and way on back before I ever remember, I was told, my mother told me how they used to dry their blackberries.
They dried them.
They dried their peanuts, string beans,
and they had what they called leather britches.
Mr. J.
They are good.
They'd just seal and dry them and put meat to them, they are
good.
Q:
How much of the crop that was on the farm was sold as produce and
how much of it did you use?
A:
Mr. J. We never sold---growed anything back then when I was a boy.
Mrs. J.
Since we
when,we lived out there, a lot of time,we growed
beans.
Mr* J.
We might have sold a few taters
Mrs. J.
We growed tobacco to sell and grain, what corn we put out,
we'd use it, have our own meal and so forth, take beans to market and
tobacco.
Mr. J.
We used to make seventy-five and seventy-six gallon* of molas-
ses here and never sold a one, we eat everyone of them.
My dad, after
we all left but my youngest brother and he would eat a snuff glass
full every morning, you know, for breakfast.
(chittling) molasses.
That's a half a pint of
�5,
Q:
Did you ever make maple syrup or maple sugar?
A:
Mr. J. I made a lot of maple sugar, I know how it's made ....
Well there was three pots, I think, one was an awful big one.
Just
out in the woods, had an old pole, and a fork in the pole laid in*it
and the lails across it. And we'd give out troughs, wooden troughs,
take . peck buckets and go around and dip it out.
Mrs. J.
Mr. J.
Tapped the sugar trees, sugar maples.
My dad used a axe, cut a place right handy and hewed out a
little old thin strips about that wide, stuck in there and drive it
in there, you know, catch your water.
Mrs. J.
Mr. J.
Makes a spout for the sap to run.
Sometimes it's clean, sometimes it'd just drip calmly, some
of it runs better than others.
Mrs. J.
Mr. J.
That boiling it down though.
I've boiled to twelve and one o'clock plenty of time.
Get
it down to pretty good syrup and bring it in home the next day or
night and boil it down to sugar.
best syrup I've ever eat.
I Hike that syrup, boy it's the
If I had a gallon I wouldn't take---wouldn't
sell it for a ten dollar bill, it'd cost more than that if a man
could get it. Dad made some for years, a little and sold it, they
was all gone, I understand it.
Q:
Did they use the sugar instead of white sugar?
A:
Mr. J.
No, sold it.
Q: How much did it bring?
&
: Mr. J.
I forget now.
Only good time was forty cents, fifty cents
a pound, thirty and forty, well the last he made he sold to a postmaster down there at old Jefferson, he got fifty or sixty cents or
more down there.
Mrs. J.
Now a---white sugar was cheaper than the maple sugar, buy
�6.
the white, would save money.
Mr. J.
Now there's a man over there on Buffalo, that would be,
he's a doctor, Sam was his name, Sao Perkins, and he tried to run it
on yarn strings, you know, to a-.-he had a outlet, you know, little
buildings where they bo He'd it down, you know,
It wouldn't run off
the hill, it'd just run a little, and just drip off, put out a lot
of money that-a-way.
Then he bought him a five-hundred or a thousand
peck buckets and had him a big trough, it was down there, and had a
hoXfe bored in there and they'd just carry it and pour it in that
trough and it run on down there where they made it, you know, they'd
catch it down there (in pots).
his buckets.
And somebody stole about every one of
I know he had five-hundred or more, ten quart buckets,
all along the row, somebody finally stole about everyone, if they
didn't
buckets.
Lord, they made hundreds of gallons of
syrup, they didn't make sugar, they just made syrup, you know, and
sold it.
Anybody with any sense a-tall would know that it wouldn't
run on yarn strings.
Q:
How about sawmilling around here?
A:
Mr. J.
That's pretty . . . .
I used to sawmill before I come to this country, I ain't
done so much since I come, well I've done some too.
1,'ve packed them
and I've rolled logs, burnt, cut the timber, ball-bust.
Mrs. J.
I ain't dome none of that, but I've cut timber.
Q:
How did you get the trees off the mountain, down to the mill?
A:
Mr. J.
Have a---easiest is by team.
Of course, I worked where
they had to ball boot them down, off of the
in Avery County some too.
River.
.
I've worked
That timber'd run eight miles up the Pigeon
But that brother seemed he was going broke so bad
two of them
one of them die"d just a while back.
twenty-seven years.
(Greg Scott)
'.ti "rr-r.-rc r:r":—i,-:':
there was
I worked for him
He sold out, bought them a truck,
�7.
went to hauling extract. Biggest extract plant that used to be down
there at Canton in the world.
used
Don't know if it's there or not, but
be there. Canton is eighteen miles, where our camp is
there.
Right on the Pigeon River.
Q: Did the railroad help any with the sawmilling?
A: Mr. J. Yes, it did. They hauled it in on trains, they got to the
right place where you loaded it. Yes, they did. And I worked
Creek where they hauled it all in for several miles.
get it off the mountain and to get on the train cars.
But you had to
Averaged
seventy-five thousand a day. Didn't matter what you taking in on
it.
That's more than they cut here in two or three months.
band mill.
That was
I handled lumber there twenty-seven feet long, twenty-
seven inches wide.
Of course, I handled most of the dry lumber,
loading cars. Old hemlock logs, splinters sticking out that far.
Had to use hand leathers and a apron here.
Hand leathers come in on
the inside of your hands here. Boy, it'd just ruin you.
Mrs. J. Ruin your hands if you got one of them hemlock splinters.
Mr. J. They cut little old "lathes," about two to two.and-a.half
inches wide and about four foot long, I think. And a eighth to a
quarter of an inch thick, and they are the hardest, and they are the
hardest things to bail. Boy, that's what they'd give a new man.
They test them out on that. Now if he could stand that, he could
stand anything.
Q:
Is this train that came down through Todd the same one that went
through Boone and up to Linville?
A: Mrs. J. No, this went back into Virginia.
Mr. J.
I don't know what they've stop that one from running
to Ashe County, have they, Jefferson, I don't think. No they had an
awful bunch out the other day. There was a string of coal here as
�8.
long as from here to that garage, just
. So big.
That's the way they get their coal in down there.
They sell it
cheaper than they do in Boone, cause they truck it in up there.
Mrs. J.
I don't know.
That train run up here a lot.
They hauled a
lot of extract back then, stuff like that.
Mr. J.
Lord, I boarded down in West Jefferson one time a while.
helped beat the first rock made them hardtops.
I
West Jefferson, Old
Jefferson, over through there.
Mrs.J.
After they took this up, the train just run from Abingdon to
West Jefferson.
Mr. J.
They used to come in, a heavy
load, there'd be two engines to it, to a load.
Why, it'd jar the whole town nearly.
It'd just chug-a-chug-&.
It would, about jar the town!
Mrs. Jones adds something which is inaudible.
0:
Did this train down here get washed out with the flood of '40?
A:
Mr. J.
Mrs. J.
Mr. J.
No, it wasn't here then.
Taken up way back yonder.
It was took up before that time.
They discontinued it.
See that grade over there is on that grade is on railroad
grade there.
Prom Todd to Pleetwood.
it had a wide road.
Best grade in the state, if
It is, the longest stretch there in the state of
North Carolina.
Mrs. J.
W«ll, it ain't wide enough for a highway.
If it was wider,
it'd be a good road.
Mr. J.
Well, it's just twelve foot down below Brownwood, Fleetwood.
You can't hardly pass on it from there.
ThereJs places you can't.
And it's washed out, fell off like it is right over yonder all along
the highway down through there.
was a week ago, I reckon.
dangerous.
I went down there last Friday.
I'm afraid to ride on that road much.
It
It's
�9.
Q: Was the train in here during the depression, or was it stopped
before that too?
A:
Mr. J.
I don't know how long it's been took up.
It was way
before you and me was married, wasn't it? Yeah, and we've been
married for thirty-eight years.
Why it's been forty some years,
I guess.
Q: What was life like around here during the depression?
A: Mrs. J.
It was pretty tough, and pretty scrimpy.
You had to
make do with what you had.
Mr. J. Well, I lived on Three Top
worst depression
Mrs. J.
back in Ashe.
That there
that was before we was married.
. . . pulled leaves, gathered herbs--~anything to buy
what was necessary.
And the rest of it they just had to do with
what they had.
Q: What types of herbs and all did they gather?
A: Mrs. J.
Oh, they was different kinds.
wood leaves,
bark
Tfi'ey gathered beech-
, beechwood bark, and witchhazel
was what they call it. And they peeled Shawneehaw, black-
berry briar root . . . .
Mr. J. Sassafras roots . . . .
Mrs. J. Sassafras roots
fras big roots.
Shawneehaw
I've had to gather many of those sassatake out to the mountain, and pull
Shawneehaw.
Mr. J.
I've treked for a mile and a half, two mile, all I could
tie up and carry. Don't get big, really.
Mrs. J. Wild cherries, wild cherries.
Mr. J. Used to pick a lot of Balm of Gilead buds, but they got so
cheap now you can't make nothing.
Q:
How much do those herbs bring?
About thirty cents a pound.
�10.
At
Mrs. J.
pound.
Oh, some of them bring from a penny to three cents a
No, Shawneehaw or the bark from Shawneehaw root sometimes
up to eight, nine, ten cents.
Witchhazel leaves usually runs two
to three cents and the bark sometimes all the way from one to three.
Mr. J.
Beetwood leaves now bring as high as thirty-four cents or
more.
Of course, everything's so high, you can't buy nothing now.
Sold a lot of them for thirty-three or -four cents a pound.
Mrs. J.
So funny.
You could get a lot more for what little money
you did get out of the store.
Mr. J.
Anyone got that price then, they'd got rich.
I been a-buying
flour over yonder at 221, used to, 1 guess for two, three, or four
years at two dollars for Blue Ribbon.
Mrs. J.
A box of matches now cost you fifteen cents.
them here around for a .nickel.
Mr. J.
Mrs. J.
Used to get
A big box of soda was a nickel.
Now it's $2.65.
A glass of snuff was a quarter. Plug of tobacco was---it run
about a quarter---200 to a quarter.
Q:
How about your salt?
A:- Mrs. J.
like that.
Salt run about eighty---about a cent a pound, something
We'd go buy rice.
Get rice for two or three cents a pound.
Box of Quaker Oats cost you maybe twenty to twenty-five cents.
Mr. J.
I bought some side meat for five cents before I was married
staying with my brother-in-law.
Q:
How much does it cost now?
A:
Mr. J.
Five cents a pound.
I looked down here at Jack's Grocery the other day, there's
a piece about that thick and so big
first meat, I don't know.
Seventy-five cents!
pound.
Mrs. J.
Meat's got ridiculous now.
, looks like
Seventy-five cents a
�11.
Q:
Was there a scarcity of jobs during the Depression?
A:
Mxz.J,
Mrs. J.
Yeah, it got awful scarce.
People that had anything to do, they just didn't have the
money to pay to have it done.
So they just had to do what they could
do theirselves and let the rest go.
Mr. J.
I remember two first checks or payrolls any monthly checks
I ever drawed was during the World War. I was just a boy, and wasn't
grown.
First one was $37.20 and the next one was $27.20.
Q:
What were you doing?
A:
Mr. J.
sand.
Doodling saw dust at a mill, cutting eight to ten thou-
Had a help awhile.
And I'd do that with a wheelbarrow by
myself, cutting eight and ten thousand feet lumber.
Now you talking
about a job, and that sun coming in on you. Couldn't stand it now, I
bet you. I think I got two dollars a day, I think.
Q:
Were there any government programs around here, in the Depression?
Like WPA, CCC.
A:
Mrs. J.
They had the WPA awhile.
mainly on it.
A lot of the men could work on
There was just so many people that needed work, they
couldn't work them all. But they did work some.
Mr. J.
Q:
I never did work at it, myself.
They were pretty hard days then, but do you remember any of the
good times during the Depression?
A:
Mr. J.
Mrs. J.
Not too much.
I expect that all the way around many fared about as good then
as they do now. A lot of them fared just as good, if not better than
they do now. We have to work awful hard now-a-days to get by.
Back
then you had to work hard to 'get by, so you get just as much pleasure
out of it.
Mr. J.
I figure
one girl's been a-working three years, in June, out
�12.
at I.R.C.
And she's made—worked out more money than I bet I work
out in twenty years, twenty-five.
got more than I've seen of my own.
one today.
She's spent a fortune, she's still
She's got a lot of bonds, got
She's got money at the Building and Loan and at the bank,
and paid for a car.
Bought sewing machines, electric irons, and
enough to fill that car full several times.
Paid for a house, clothes,
and everything.
Mrs. J.
Mr. J.
Q:
My iron.
We got the iron and give it to her.
That's right, you did.
But she got i1^ though.
What were the first electrical appliances you got?
A good one.
Do you remem-
ber?
A:
Mr. J.
Mrs. J.
Mr. J.
Yeah, no-no, it was an old refrigerator.
Refrigerator, and next was the washing machine.
That's it down yonder.
Kelvinator--that fellow called it
Kelvinator.
Q:
Yeah, that's what my grandmother called it.
A:
Mrs. J.
Mr. J.
Did you get a radio?
Yeah, we've got one.
We've got several.
Got two now, one's shot and the other
won't play at all, unless you cut it off---I
no more.
Transistor radio's what I use now.
Q:
What were some of the programs you listened to?
A:
Mr. J.
Q:
Yeah, some of the first ones.
A:
Mr. J.
On the radio?
Oh,"Amos and Andy."
Mrs. J. "Grand Ole Opry," "Amos and Andy."
Then sometimes on Sunday,
we'd get singing and preaching.
Q:
Where did y'all go to church?
A:
Mr. J.
Up here at the top of the mountain, now.
up there on Three Top, we went to Kraut.
When we lived
�13.
Q:
Was the church a pretty important part of your life when you were
growing up?
A:
Mrs. J.
Mr. J.
Yeah, it was.
Had to walk two or three mile off the mountain.
three-quarter of a mile nearly straight down.
them.
Paid no attention to it then.
Mrs. J.
else.
Well, there's
Big, deep snows on
That's the God's truth.
People used to really go to church better then than anytime
They got cars and they'll take off somewhere else, you know--
not stay at home.
Mr. J.
Mrs. J.
I walked sixteen to eighteen miles many times before . . . .
They used to---Sunday mornings would come, you'd have to get
up and work-—do what you have to do, and then get ready to go to
church, walk, and come back home.
Mr. J.
Fix you something to eat.
We'd used to ride the horses back or go in a wagon when I
was lust a boy.
know, walking.
I'd see old men coming when with the canes, you
And buggies, yeah, a lot of buggies.
I'd go, "What
in the world is the matter with that man, has to have a cane."
Blame, I've had to use one or two times, some crutches.
I've had to
use crutches.
Q:
How often did y'all have services?
A:
Mrs. J.
We usually have services once a month, a preaching service,
Sunday School every Sunday.
Q:
How about revivals?
A:
Mrs. J.
Mr. J.
Usually had one revival a year.
Now it's two.
And this man that runs the church, he has to
get somebody to do the preaching, so we can have two to pay now.
much money.
Too
Some type of helper, I don't care how--the pastor up
here weighs 274 pounds.
And he can preach, preach up a storm.
And
he has to get somebody else to do the preaching when we have a revival.
�14.
He's a big man.
Q:
Who is he?
A:
Mr. J.
Mr s. J.
Herbert Goodman.
Goodman.
Q:
How did that church get it*
A:
Mrs. J.
Mr. J.
name?
Do you know?
No, I don't.
No, I don't know.
I've been in this country thirty-seven
years in March, I reckon.
Mrs. J.
That church has been established a long time.
I don't
know how it got its. name.
Mr. J.
Yes, that's been established maybe ninety years, I guess.
Well, they've had it a long time.
Q:
I guess Mr. Grogan up yonder would know.
A:
Mr. J.
Mrs. J.
Mr. J.
He'd know a whole lot about it.
He might come near to telling you how long it's been/
He's been a member up there for years.
conversation about his brother.)
month.
(Tape goes into
He's got a birthday right next
He's eighty-seven or eighty-eight year old. I'll have to
look it up one of these days, in the Bible.
Bibles--tore all to pieces.
Now I mean ole-timey
Bible like that now, oh, a i n ' t a-telling
what it would bring, would it.
Mrs. J.
Yeah, those people out at the flea market offered $75.00,
didn't they?
Mr. J.
tore.
out.
There's plenty of
if it hadn't been
Two of my oldest brothers got in to it when the rest were
And they tore it all to pieces.
that big.
END OP SIDE 1
Oh, the back on it was nearly
�15.
A:
Mr. J.
That's nine years, I guess.
Got gone in ' 2 And
6.
I had to send off—my name wasn't in it.
brother had it Virginia.
Someone else had it.
My
Had to write on it there, and he sent
that pages that had his on it.
I' took it.
Don't know how I'd ever
got it that day.
Q:
Were there a lot of doctors in this area?
A:
Mr. J.
Q:
What did y'all do when you couldn't get a doctor?
A:
Mrs. J.
No.
Well, if you couldn't get one, you had to do the best
I could.
Mr. J.
Mrs. J.
There's one that lived up here for years.
There's one that lived right up the river here, and there's
one at'Boone that would go out on calls.
Mr. J.
He's dead now.
a good country doctor.
to.
One over on Creston---Three Top.
He was
He always went out, "hoss" back, or used
Finally got one at Todd.
Mrs. J.
Well, if you really had to have one, if you fine them at
home, well he'd go up the river here.
Mr. J,
People died then of appendicitis, and they just called it
indigestion or something; colic or something.
Yeah, it killed a
many a one, and they didn't know what was the matter with them.
Mrs. J.
Well, people used to---they wasn't no doctors around
handy, and they just had to doctor the best way they thought.
they got better, it's all right.
If
If they died, it had to be all
right, because it's all they had.
Mr. J.
They weren't experimenting like they are now.
live twenty-one days with double pneumonia.
Had a brother
Sight a man ever been
in that country.
Q:
What were some of the home remedies that your mother used?
�16.
A:
Mr. J.
Mrs. J.
Used boneset
or my mother did, and catnip . . . .
Ole penny royal-— for colds or anything like that, they'd
make a tea out of penny royal.
And lots of times whenever a baby
was cross, wouldn't sleep, they'd take a catnip block, and make a
tea, and give it to the baby.
And they used camphor for other things.
Colds and colic or anything like that.
camphor in water .
Mr. J.
Give them a few drops of
.» .
We used to take two or three drops of camphor in a bowl of
milk, and give it to a baby and it'll ease him right now; or else
it used to for colic.
Mrs. J.
And for people who had chest colds or fevers, well, they'd
make a poultice from, ah, roast onions and mix sulphur or something
with them, and make a poultice and place it on their chest to break
up the fever.
Ah, there's so many of them there old remedies.
I
couldn't think of all they were.
Q:
What was sassafras tea used for?
A:
Mr. J.
Mrs. J.
Yeah, people used to drink a lot of that.
Yeah, they used to drink that in the spring of the year
for a tonic.
Mr. J.
Yeah, those winters.
Mrs. J.
Yeah, and sometimes they'd drink it instead of drinking
coffee.
They'd make a tea out of it and drink it instead of coffee.
Mr. J.
It's cheaper now than coffee.
Mrs. J.
Ten ounces for a $1.75.
Back during the Depression, why, coffee was so high and
we's so low on money, we had to parch rye around here and make
coffee out of it.
Q:
Mr. Jones, you said your wife knew some of these old farm super-
stitions.
A:
Mr. J.
Could you two give me some of them?
I don't know.
I know I'd never like to plant nothing
�17.
when the moon points was up.
I don't know if there's anything
in it or not, but I never did likfe to.
I put out some onions one
time when the points were up, and I couldn't keep them in the
ground.
Mrs. J.
Superstition is a pair of cedar trees.
Little, ole cedar.
If you plant it, by the time it gets up big enough to shade a grave,
why you'll die.
Mr. J.
All kinds of stuff like that.
Why you can plant it, and my mother argued argued there was-~
something in it.
You planted corn or beans, put the heart down and
it won't hardly freeze.
And I tell you what.
You just go right
there and drop corn and beans and see if they ain't worlds of it—
lots of it ain't even hurt at all, and the other just cooked.
Mrs. J.
Mr. J.
I've seen some that-a-way, but I don't know . . . .
My mother tried
if she could.
she tried to plant a little on Good Friday
She always planted with the eye down, so she could
have some early beans.
something in that.
I tell you one thing, I believe there's
You can plant a whole row through there, and
there*d come a big frost there, and it'll kill some dead and won't
hurt some.
Mrs. J.
Used to plant you one to make you a few potatoes.
Plant
them about when the sun was in the moon, in the dark of the moon.
I heard once about, something about, there was a family asking when
was a good time to plant potatoes.
moon."
Told them 'bn the dark of the
So they thought that was getting out in the night time and
planting, using lanterns.
Mr. J.
You know there's a lot of people won't cut wood only at
certain times.
They won't walk after it. Yeah, they won't, at
certain times, cut their wood.
Q:
I was talking to a fellow the other day, yesterday, and he
�18.
said that he'd be putting the boards on the barn.
And if you put
them on when either the moon was growing or was full, it would bow
them out.
If the moon was shrinking, it would set them in there
tight.
A:
Mrs. J.
Well, I know there are times that you can put boards
on a barn, and them dirty things will just cup up.
Mr. J.
Mrs. J.
The moon points it up when it does that, I know.
And I have seen them on buildings that way where they|ve
just turned up.
Mr. J.
Ixwas madder—I couldn't even see hardly.
Those wouldn't
set in there at all.
Q:
Isn't there one about planting corn?
I think, if it's
if the
moon's full, you plant your corn, it'll grow higher.
A:
Mr.J.
Mrs. J.
No, it'll grow higher, I think, on the new moon.
I think that when the moon's new, if you plant your corn,
why it'll grow taller.
Mr. J.
Mrs. J.
Yeah, some people plant in the moon.
Yeah, I always planted in the ground.
attention to it much.
it.
I never did payono
Wanted to plant something I always planted
Old-^people used---they used to have certain signs when they
planted everything.
You can get these here gardening books
and they still go by the signs in planting root crops, planting
you know, stuff that grows above ground.
attention to it.
I never did pay much
I just went and planted when I got ready to.
Q:
What did they use for fertilizer back yonder?
A:
Mrs. J.
Well their
the only fertilizer they used back then
was just the litter from the barn and stables, because they didn't
buy it, they didn't have it.
factured it
Well, back there I reckon they manu-
nowhere around here, where they could get it.
But they
�19.
used the litter from the barns, and in their big fields where they
put their corn or something like that, why they didn't use anything.
Most of the time, they just cleaned out new land.
They'd tend it
till it gets so it wouldn't make nothing and then they'd let it grow
up and try a new patch.
Wood land then
was
had a lot of, you know,
weeds had rotted on it so long; so long as it had lay it there.
just planted in it, after they cleaned it off.
They
But, when it wouldn't
make any more, why they'd let it change off and clear them off another
patch, and try it.
Q:
Did all the gardening with horse drawn stuff, didn't you?
A:
Well, they usually had a patch that they kept their stable litter
throwed on, that they did their gardening on.
Mite small.
My mom
and dad always used their stable litter a little on their garden.
She always had a pretty garden too.
Q:
Yeah, they didn't have tractors back then, did they?
A:
No, no, they used a team to do their plowing with, or oxen.
oxen a lot.
use a horse.
Used
And if they wanted anything cultivated, why, they had to
They have cultivated with oxen too.
I've drove oxens.
I don't like it.
Q:
How is it different from driving horses?
A:
Mrs. J.
Well, oxen can be so stubborn.
won't budge at all.
They won't budge
till they get ready to.
ever they get ready, then they'll go on.
you can make him go on.
They can just bug up and
When-
But a horse, most of the time,
One of them old oxen, when he's stuck, he's
just going to stay there til he's ready to go.
Q:
Did the farmers make the yokes for the oxen themselves?
A:
Mrs. J.
Yeah, some of them did.
knew how to make them made them.
that made them.
They used
some of them that
Maybe one person in the settlement
�20.
Q:
Did they have a blacksmith around here?
A:
Mrs. J.
Q:
Where did y'all go to school over here?
A:
Mrs. J.
at Trout.
I guess they did, I don't know where though.
Well, I went to school at Deep Gap, and he went to school
He lived back in Ashe, he's from Ashe,
Watauga County.
I went to school in Deep Gap.
I was born here in
Well, I first went to
school at the old schoo}, one room school building on
Creek.
x
And then they put the schools together and took out a lot of the one
room schools, and took out some of the county schools.
Mr. J.
seen.
I remember the first air
car and the first airplane I ever
I bet you don*t---can't remember that.
Q:
No.
Where was it?
A:
Mr. J.
Way back in Ashe County.
First airplane
(car)
I ever seen.
twelve or thirteen years old.
said, "all take a peek."
Up on what they call the "Bluff."
I was going to school---about
Went past the schoolhouse.
Rose something or another.
got to see it, it was gone out of sight.
stayed all after
Teacher
Before we all
After that he come back and
a little piece at church, I mean, schoolhouse.
We'd
go there and boy we thought that was the awfullest that had ever been.
We'd look at it, go over there, reach in it, look at that car.
Mrs. J.
I can't really remember the first car I ever seen, but 1 can
remember the first airplane I ever seen.
We were living in Virginia
at that time, and they's, gee I forget now whether there was five or
how many there was in the bunch.
Mr. J.
Mrs. J.
Five or seven.
Went over in a bunch.
They was the first ones I can remem-
ber.
Q:
What did you think of them when you saw them?
A:
Mrs. J.
Oh, I thought that was something great.
All them airplanes,
�21.
I just don't remember the first car I ever seen.
Mr. J.
Well, I do.
Mrs. J.
I sort of remember one Dad ever bought.
He got an old
"scooter," strong armed as I am I'd run it up in the trees every time.
Q:
How much mileage did you get in those old cars?
A:
Mrs. J,
I don't really know.
I was too young really to know any-
thing about them.
Mr. J.
Didn't have any roads then.
Back in '27, with only gravel
roads, if you got thirty-five mile,you's flying.
boys taking me to see my girl.
road, and you were flying then.
I know.
One of the
Hit thirty-five mile on that old.gravel
They thought that was something.
Q:
How many miles to the gallon of gas?
A:
Mr. J.
I don't know.
There was-—according to what model it was,
I guess.
Mrs. J.
Mr. J.
I don't know myself . . . .
I don't remember for my life.
now.
They's quite a difference from
Now one son-in-law, he told our daughter here---he's got one of
them, I reckon you kinda call foreign made
1 reckon it's made in the
United States or it's made just like one of those foreign cars.
I
think he gets about thirty-five miles.(to the gallon)
Q:
I get about thirty-two on my Volkswagen.
age.
You were talking about courting.
That's pretty good mile-
What all did you do?
What did
you do on your dates?
A:
Mr. J.
Mrs. J.
Mr. J.
Mrs. J.
Mr. J.
Q:
I'd just go and sit all night is all I done.
We'd just sit and talk.
Stay till about eleven or twelve o' clock.
We never did go anywhere.
Go to bed.
He'd come visit, sit and talk.
I went everyday.
Did you ever go pick berries or cherries or work in the garden
�22.
together?
Mrs. J.
Mr. J.
Oh, we might have gone out together and pick cherries to eat.
They were going to clear out the pig-pen one time, but I didn't
stay long.
Mrs. J.
I come back.
I was scared of it.
I don't know, we might of got out and worked cutting cabbage
or something, anytime that we'd be a working.
Q:
Can y'all think of anything else that I haven't asked you about?
A:
Mr. J.
I don't reckon.
After you leave, I can think of a whole
lot.
Mrs. J.
Whenever a fellow's trying to think of something,
ever think of
Q:
it.
We appreciate you giving us this information.
he can't
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region.
The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students.
Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU.
An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school.
This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information.
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Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989
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1965-1989
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Wetmore, Dana
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2014-02-24
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Title
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Interview with Sam Jones, June 12, 1973
Description
An account of the resource
Sam Jones was born in Deep Gap, North Carolina around the early 1900s on a farm where he grew up. He worked at a sawmill.
Mr. Jones starts the interview talking about growing up on a farm. At this point his wife joins the interview, and they begin talking about berry-picking and produce. Mr. Jones also talks about working at the sawmill and the importance of the railroads in transportation. They both talk about their experiences with the Great Depression including topics of picking herbs, working, and church. Mr. and Mrs. Jones discuss the lack of doctors in the past and different home remedies they used. To end the conversation, the two recall the first time they saw a car and airplane.
Creator
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McNeely, Mike
Jones, Sam
Source
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<a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a>
Date
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6/12/1973
Rights
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Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989, W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Any commercial use of the materials, without the written permission of the Appalachian State University, is strictly prohibited.
Extent
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22 pages
Language
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English
English
Type
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document
Identifier
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111_tape84_SamJones_1973_06_12M001
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Todd, NC
Subject
The topic of the resource
Farm life--North Carolina--Watauga County--20th century
Watauga County (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century
Depression--1929--North Carolina--Watauga County
Sawmill workers--North Carolina--Watauga County
Mountain life--North Carolina--Watauga County--History--20th century--Anecdotes
berry picking
Deep Gap
dried fruit
farming
Great Depression
herbs and roots
home rememdies
livestock
maple syrup
railroad
Sam Jones
sawmill
-
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/ab8686b5fb4497ba70bd4c6b5182c071.pdf
074f931fb93d3313700b2501b715bc84
PDF Text
Text
This is an interview with Ruby Trivette for tLe Appalachian
Oral History Project by Bill Bullock on February 17, 1973.
A:
As far back as I can remember when I was a child and lived
—
I was born in Ashe County, about 20 miles, no, about 15 miles
from here; and the family moved to the present location when I
was 5 years old.
My grandparents lived within sight and I can
remember going to my grandparents' home as a child and being
homesick.
I wanted to go home, and being unable to say "home"
or to make that distinction known, I was told I always said,
I!I
want to ;go walking."
Somebody usually pacified me before
the time to go home.
My memory of life before that time is rather sketchy and varied;
I'm not sure what I remember and what I've been told that I was,
has become a part of my early memories.
Whether this is something
I remember or have been told about, it has become a part of my
so-called memory.
When I was very small, before we moved to this
particular area, I can remember riding on the old workhorse
(I believe the
old horse's name was Kate.).
From the barn, I
can remember riding the horse with my Father holding me on the
horse down to the watering trough in the old spring-place to
get —
to water the
old horse.
My Father had some sheep and
on this particular Spring, I possibly was four or maybe five,
I'm not sure.
But among the little lambs there was one black
one which became mine by divine right of having my own way; and
�I can remember being so proud of that little lamb, and how
heartbroken I was when one morning the little lamb did not
turn up with the rest of the sheep.
When daddy got out to
hunting it, why, he found it had died from what reason I
have no idea whatsoever.
When we first moved to this particular setting, these whole
meadows here were covered in mostly laurel, some maple, and
other hardwoods of that sort.
The creek at that time had many
deep holes and my brothers and I found it quite an enticing
place to play.
There was rather a mythological, scary figure
that, we were told, would get us if we went out to the creek.
That particular thing we called ol'Bloodybones.
I never knew
exactly what Bloodybones looked like but it sufficed to keep
us away from the creek at a time when we might have been
drowned.
In fact, I remember one time my younger brother, I
recall, was just a small toddler, and he had fallen
that crossed the creek.
off a footlog
At that time we carried water from
across the creek from the spring and brought it up the house.
He had fallen off into a rather deep hole and fortunately my
Mother saw him and was able to yank him out of the hole.
And again in those days, toys, such as children have such a
number of today, did not exist.
For jumpropes, we went over on
the hill and cut green briars and very carefully got rid of the
briars.
But we had some good jumpropes.
There was also some
sort of a vine and we called it "jackvine". I'm not sure just
what the correct name was, but we made ropes and jumpropes and
�tied all sorts of things with that.
Many times we'd go up onto
the mountain into the woods and we'd find wild grapevines.
Of course, (at) that age we were not trusted with a knife, but
we didn't need a knife many times.
We'd find a sharp rock and
keep beating and banging and bruising on an old grapevine down
at the ground to the point we were able to just get hold of the
grapevine and swing out - way out into the woods - it made no
difference to us if down underneath us, forty or fifty feet, was
a big rock cliff.
That didn't bother at all.
Q:
What was Christmas like?
A:
What was Christmas like?
Christmas for us in the early days
was; well, it was a time when we looked forward to it a great deal.
It was not commercialized to the extent it is today, and since
children didn't have a great deal of toys.
If we got one toy,
the boys got a jackknife from a Jay Lynn catalog, or a juice harp
or French harp.
That, maybe one toy, and most of the time we
needed shoes or clothing, so maybe we got some clothing, and
maybe an orange or nuts, and a little bit of candy - most stick
candy than any other kind.
I recall one time I got what I
thought was the most beautiful doll that I'd ever seen; the first
store-bought doll I ever had.
or six at the time.
Q:
What was it like?
I must not have been more than five
�A:
I tell you, I had a rugged life trying to keep up with that
bunch of boys; and I didn't think it was fair that they should
be able to do anything that I couldn't do.
I gave them a
hard run for their money - all of them.
Q:
What was family life like, doing chores?
A:
Every child had its own particular bit of chores to do, work
around the house.
In those days there was wood to cut, wood
to haul into the woodyard, wood to split for stovewood, and
of course, the fireplace wood to be taken care of.
There were
cattle, cows to milk, and calves to look after, and sheep to be
looked after, and horses to be fed and watered, and everybody. .
oh, chickens to be looked after.
had our own eggs.
We raised our own chickens,
I remember, possibly when I was five years
old, I took a pint cup with my Mother to milk and found out
that I could squeeze a little milk out of the old cow.
Q:
What was the main source of income?
A:
Farming.
That was about all.
In those early days people just
about raised on the farm what they existed on.
Now for sugar
and other staples that you couldn't raise, you had maybe some
extra chickens and eggs and butter and things like that.
It was mostly a barter economy in those days.
You would
�go to the store with a little jaggard of money and buy a sack
of flour or something like that.
You traded for it.
Particularly in this area, most people just about raised what
they lived on.
I can remember when we raised our own wheat
and had it ground.
those days.
Buckwheat, we used a lot of buckwheat in
We always had that buckwheat.
Raised our own,
had it thrashed and carried it up to Meatcamp to the
Winebarger watermill and had our own flour ground.
And all
transportation was by horse and wagon, buggy or sled.
Q:
What about the development of Todd?
A:
My earliest remembrance of Todd goes back to a time when Todd
was quite a prosperous and thriving little metropolis.
We had a bank.
depot.
We had a drugstore. We had, of course, the
The train, of course, ran in at that time.
The main
source of transportation and commerce at that time that
brought the railroad in here was the chestnuts, especially the
tanbark from the chestnut wood, and cross-ties and things like
that.
Much of the lumber in the area was sawed up into cross-
ties and lumber.
It left here by train.
Q:
Do you remember the train being put in?
A:
No.
I don't remember exactly.
I can't recall that, I can just
—
�I know when the train was here.
remember when it came.
That probably, no. . .1 don't
I couldn't tell you that I knew that.
The train was here as far back as I can recall.
Q:
What about the depression?
Do you remember the depression?
Can you tell me something about what happened?
A:
Well, as far as the depression was actually concerned in this
area, we had no soup lines, nor did we have anybody on
starvation.
But again, people who owned their own property
or who lived on the land, so to speak, made out with just
about what they could raise.
Grown men worked many a day for
a quarter a day, sometimes fifty cents.
But then you could
take what you earned (now that was a 10-hour day, not an 8hour day) and go to the local grocery store and carry enough
home to feed a huge family on for some time.
was just about non-existent.
time.
Money, as such,
Especially at this particular
Many people in this area began to raise cabbage for the
market, the kro,ut factory at Boone.
maybe a quarter of a cent a pound.
I believe cabbage was
I'm not sure.
It finally
got to the point that I believe we had a field above the road
over here at one time (and) I believe part of it just stood
there.
Q:
There was no sale for it at all.
Do you think people were better off out here than they were in
the city?
�A:
In that regard, yes. Because (in) rural life in those days,
as well as now, rural people tend to look after each other.
If somebody needed help, everybody shared to the last goround.
While possibly in towns or in the cities at this
particular time, maybe one didn't know what his neighbor
needed or maybe there was a different philosophical attitude.
Q:
Do you think that today that still exists?
A:
To some extent.
However, in this particular area, as far as
helping one's neighbor (or it doesn't have to be one who lives
nearby, someone in the community who has suffered some misfortune in some way), everybody tends to assist in any way
they can.
However, the time had come until "my business is
not everybody else's business."
There is beginning to be a
little more of the metropolitan attitude.
engrossed in everyone's private affairs.
We're not so
Now there was a time
when practically everyone in any area was somehow related or
inter-related and it was just about like one big family in a
sense.
And today, young people in the rural area have moved
out, and as we say, foreigners have come in; and it isn't quite
the same.
But there's still maybe a sense of a deeper
fellowship camaraderie prevalent in many areas.
Q:
What about the people that are moving in now, the tourists
that are at Beech Mountain, Sugar Mountain?
�A:
Well now, I have little connection with Beech Mountain, Sugar
Grove, or anything of that sort.
Of course, they have moved
in here primarily for summer-home and winter recreational
facilities.
Most of the people who have come into this
particular area who have purchased homes, or even have
summer homes, they are —
let's say —
they own the property,
maybe they pay taxes, but as for adding much to the general
cultural level of the community, there's not much interchange or relationship in that sense.
Q:
Do you particularly like it?
A:
Well, I have no objection to anyone getting rid of his
property wherever he wants to.
But I'll have to get down
to dire need before I'd sell any property to anybody of that
sort.
I have no, no reason for that except that from what
we have been able to see from experience.
They, maybe, the
general cultural level and educational level have not increased
any as a result.
Q:
I should say that.
Do you think these people are kind of destroying the mountains
as they were?
A:
Well, there has been a great deal of change throughout this
whole area.
Much of it has, in the ecological sense, destroyed
the native beauty and attractiveness of the landscape.
�10
Q:
So you could do without them?
A:
Well, I could.
My livelihood and my economy doesn't depend
on them in any way.
Q:
What about your education?
I want you to kind of tell me
about your early elementary school and on up until you got
your degree to be a teacher.
A:
Well, when I started to school, there was no laws, no law
giving a specific age for entry in school.
You went when
Mom and Dad decided you was big enough to get there, I guess.
I started to school in a little frame schoolhouse about a
quarter of a mile from here when I was five.
However, before
I went to school, I have no recollection at all of when or how
I learned to read; but before I ever saw the inside of a
schoolhouse, I was reading Zane Grey books and things of that
sort.
It was just a great deal of that, I'm sure, came
through my Grandmother who lived with us for years.
us all, I guess, in a sense.
boxes and so on.
and so on.
She taught
We read, oh, sugar bags and soda
We associated words with what she'd tell us
One of the earliest teachers I can remember was
Graham - D. W. Graham and his wife.
Mr. Graham is now dead and
Mrs. Graham is the mother of Dr. James Graham in Boone.
They taught at the local school.
Wilson Norris of Boone and
Mrs. Edith Norris, his wife, also were among my early teachers.
�11
Mr. Wade Norris, who died a year or two ago, was an early
teacher.
Mr. Elic Tugman, the father of the Tugman boys in
Boone, and then that just about brings it down to the time
that Mr. Ron Davis hit us all broadsided as an elementary
teacher.
Q:
I reckon everyone remembers him?
A:
Everybody remembers Ron, Mr. Ron Davis.
He was an excellent
teacher, but we thought he was awfully hard.
However, if I
was every inspired to aspire to becoming a teacher, I think
perhaps he gave me the little leverage I needed to send me on
the way.
He was very hard.
He was quite a stern taskmaster.
We soon learned when he said something, he didn't beat about the
bush about it, we knew it had to be just as he said it was.
Then that just about took me up to the time when we went into
highschool, and highschool began at the eighth grade.
Mr.
Davis continued his education along as he taught, and we thought
once we had left the elementary grades that we'd get rid of him;
but he came right along up the line, and most of us had him for
at least a few classes in highschool.
Q:
When did you go to college?
A:
I started college in 1936 and went three years, and completed
my B.S. degree in 1940.
�12
Q:
When did you start teaching?
A:
I started teaching in the fall of the same year at a school
in Wilkes County that is now no longer in existence as such.
It was Mount Pleasant High School in Wilkes County at that time.
Q:
What grade did you teach?
A:
Well, I'm an English teacher.
I taught English.
in English, French, and History.
I was certified
My first year I taught some
English, some French, and some History to the various levels.
Q:
That was 1937 you started teaching?
A:
I started teaching in 1940.
Q:
You've been teaching ever since?
A:
I've been teaching continuously ever since.
The first year,
or when I applied for a job, jobs were pretty scarce in those
days and there was no vacancy in either my own home county of
Watauga or Ashe.
I had a friend who taught, in fact, he was
the principal at this particular school.
In communication with
him, he told me there was a vacancy in my field and I applied
at this school and had the fortune to get a school.
My salary was $96 a month.
in my life —
$96 —
The biggest money I've ever earned
and 8 months school.
�13
Q:
What would you do in the summer?
A:
In the summer months when I was not in school and after I got
my B.S. degree, I did not return to school for 3 or 4 years,
I'm not sure.
Most of my summers I spent at home because the
first year I taught, I taught in Wilkes County and the illness
of my Mother made it necessary that I stay home.
I did apply
and was fortunate enough to get a job at the local school just
across the hill, almost in sight.
years.
I taught over here about 7
(As for) my summers up until when the war began, my
brothers were all in the service except for one, who was 4-F
because of high blood pressure and a heart condition.
He
hadn't been well for years.
Q:
What war was that?
A:
World War II.
Mother had a heart condition.
Eventually it
became necessary that she go to the hospital and remain there
for, oh, continuously, for the last six months of her life.
And again, that was in the time of World War II when gas
rationing and tire rationing and sugar rationing and everything
was in effect.
and back.
I just about had to make a trip a day to Boone
With a little understanding on the part of the
rationing board, I managed to get enough gas to do the necessary
running.
A.
I believe a C rationing gave you a little more than an
An ordinary passenger car, I think, got so many A stamps
�14
for a month or so and so. You couldn't get anywhere on that.
Q:
You remember the flood of '40, don't you?
A:
The flood of '40, yes.
begin in Wilkes County.
It was just about time for school to
It was to be my first school.
Before
time for school to start, the flood came and, of course, the
road washed out over the top of the mountain out in Deep Gap.
Many of the roads to Wilkes County were destroyed and schools
were delayed.
I'm not sure how long . . . several weeks until
the road could be repaired before we could start school.
Right here in this valley I well remember it rained for, I
don't know, 3 or 4 days almost continuously.
afternoon it just continued to pour.
about have saturated the whole earth.
On this particular
The rain seemed to just
This particular afternoon
it got darker than usual along about 3 or 4 o'clock.
continued to pour down.
Rain
The creek out back of my house in
ordinary times was nothing more than a little stream you could
almost jump over, and there was a footblock, I guess about 15
or 20 feet above the water that we crossed over going over on the
hill.
Some of my brothers decided they'd better get out and see
about the cattle. We had some milk cows and calves, and they
were grazing back on the other side of the creek up on the
mountain.
So a couple of them took the milk bucket over to the
cow and maybe milked; I believe they milked.
Before they could
get back, I had stepped out on the back porch and saw a veritable
wall of water coming down to the house over Balm of Gilead trees,
�15
some 30 feet high, I guess.
That wall of water, it didn't
go over the top of them, it just swayed them over and covered
the whole thing.
By that time, not only was the wall of
water between us and the hill on this side, but the water
had cut a new channel and spread out all over those meadows
out here.
The house here was on the highest ground and it did
split going on either side.
So part of the family was on that
side of the creek and part of it was over here.
The boys who
were on the mountain side just followed the trail on down to the
next neighbor's house and there was no way for them to get
across, so they spent the night there.
When we realized that
it was going to be rather dangerous to stay here, we made
arrangements to get out.
We chained the car to an apple tree
and a couple of my brothers veritably carried our mother out—
the water striking the boys (and a couple of them were about
grown at that time) above the waist.
who lived just across the road.
We went over to the people
Before we got out, we had 3 or
4 hogs in the hogpen where the water was swirling around.
My brother, Tom, took a big old hammer, we called it a rock
hammer or a go-devil or something of the sort.
He knocked the
door down to the hogpen and let the hogs out so they swam out
and got around the barn.
Even before they could get to safety
around the barn, the water was so swift that when the hogs
came out of the pen, it just swept them off their feet.
Some of them were swept down, oh, between the barn and the
house and managed to get out and get back up to the barn.
�16
One of the calves that couldn't be satisfied without trying
to cross the creek and get back upon the hill where its mother
was, washed away.
down the river.
It managed to get to land about 3 miles
Somehow or another there was a little island
back there and along with other neighbors''
animals (many of
them were washed into the mountain side of the river), managed
to get out and survive.
Q:
So did the hogs drown?
A:
No, the hogs survived.
We lost nothing except an awful lot
of topsoil, all the fences we had, and that one calf, I believe,
the extent ot it.
Q:
So most of the people took care of each other?
A:
Absolutely.
Q:
What was the feeling?
A:
Well, we'd never experienced anyting like that before.
always had rain.
Were you really scared?
We'd
We..had always been accustomed to the old
creek out back of the house.
It would get up pretty angry
at times and maybe get out of its bank, but nobody ever had
any conception of what it would be like for just a veritable
downpour such as that, and just sweep houses and cattle and
fences and everything away.
We had some young fryers.
�17
We raised our own at that time, and we had a bunch of young
fryers.
They got drabbled and somehow or other they'd made
their way toward the house and had gotten on the back porch.
I grabbed up a chicken coop and slammed some of them inside
and took it out to set it in the woodhouse.
Just as I set
foot in the woodhouse, I felt the whole thing give away.
It was gone, chicken coop and all, within the space of five
minutes.
Q:
I just did get out in time.
What did most of the people think about the flood afterwards?
What was the feeling?
A:
Well, I guess if you are wondering if the people through this
area thought it was a judgement of God or something, I didn't
hear anything of that sort.
It was a natural phenomenon and
most people were so grateful in comparison with the horrors
that had been reported from the Wilkes County side and down
Elk where the landslide was.
So many people had lost their
lives, a week or two later they were still finding bodies in
brush piles on so on.
It was a feeling of gratitude and thank-
fulness that it was no worse in this area than it was.
So as
far as I know, no one in our particular area right here lost
anything more than . . . (tape ends).
Q:
What about church life?
A:
Well, we are certainly in a strict Bible belt.
Within this
little community there, up the highway 194 towards Boone, is
�18
a little Episcopal church that is no longer being pastored,
but in those days it was certainly a vital part of it.
And again, in those early days, through Mrs. W. S. Miller
(who sort of saw to it that the Episcopal church did continue
to live) in many instances, books, printed material and
sometimes clothing, through her effort were sent outside this
little area to help many of the people who had large families.
Not many of them had much reading material.
Of course there
are a lot of these churches in our community.
There's the
Baptist church, of which I am a member, and all my forefathers
before me.
The next largest was Methodist and then Holiness
church, the Holiness Tabernacle Church.
was the pastor.
Mr. Ed Blackburn
Have you talked with Ed?
You must.
Q:
Ed kind of helps out everybody, right?
A:
Ed"s mother and my grandmother were sisters, and not only does
Ed sort of look after the spiritual welfare of all the people,
it doesn't make any difference, rich or poor, stranger or a
next-door neighbor, anyone who needs help, Ed's right there.
Q:
How had the church changed from when you were a little girl to now?
A:
Well, the biggest change that I see - when I was a little girl
the church that I attended was located about a half a mile up
South Fork river from Todd.
It was just an old frame building.
We had the old pot-bellied stove in the middle of the church.
�19
The church was just one big room.
Of course it was curtained
off eventually for Sunday School rooms and then we'd draw the
curtains for the auditorium for the preaching and so on.
Other than the style, of course, of the so-called ministry,
the
attitude
of the people, I guess you could say, have
changed more than anything else.
Right now we have a rather
comfortable brick building down in the little village itself.
We have a beautiful auditorium; and we have, I couldn't tell
you, a dozen or more Sunday School rooms, and all the space in
the world we need.
In those old days, and I can remember back
then, we didn't have a regular preacher right here for this
particular church, but I don't know, maybe once or twice a
month these preachers (one of them a Preacher Roberts) would
ride the train in from Abingdon or Bristol or somewhere, I'm
not sure just where. And if they came on a Saturday now, we
had Saturday services.
There were two services, maybe in those
days maybe two services a month.
There would be a Saturday
service and then a Sunday service.
The minister who came in to
pastor the church would spend the night among some of
his
parishioners and on Sunday, would preach and, I guess, I don't
recall definitely, but I assume that he had to stay over til
Monday to take the train back.
Transportation, I can remember,
we walked to church or if we didn't walk, we rode in a wagon
or a buggy or something like that.
weather everybody walked.
Most of the time in pretty
�20
Q:
Was Sunday a real exciting time, something to look forward to?
A:
Well yes, everybody was just . . . church about the only place
you went during the week in those days.
It was not only the
spiritual center, but the recreational center.
Friends,
relatives, and neighbors seldom saw each other more than on
Sunday, you know, and so everybody found out everybody else's
affairs and how everybody was doing.
It was not only a worship
service and Sunday School, but it was just a general get-together.
Q:
Do you think now that churches have lost that get-together sort
of thing?
A:
Well, not in our rural area.
Most people still have that.
Taking myself as an example, I certainly would have to say it's
different because I'm usually about the first one out of church
and I zoom home to get me something to eat.
But generally
speaking, everybody stands around, especially in pretty weather,
and talks, you know, and nobody is in any hurry to get home —
except me.
I guess perhaps one reason for that —
have very few ties with many of the people in that
right now I
community
except church attendance and the little rural store down here.
I see more of the people in the West Jefferson area where I
teach than I do around here.
Perhaps the attitude of people
towards spiritual things has changed a little bit in some areas,
but we're pretty narrow-minded here.
Right's right and wrong's
wrong, and there's no gray shades in between.
�21
Now I didn't quite finish awhile ago about my education after
I got my B.S. degree and went to teaching.
Of course, there
was a regulation at that particular time that within five years
you must renew.
So when I started back to renew, I also started
work on my Masters degree which I finished in '53, while I
taught school 9 months of the year and went to school 12 months,
Saturday and extension classes and so forth.
Q:
You said your mother lived to be 104 years old?
A:
My grandmother.
Q:
Could you tell me a little bit about her?
A:
Well, my grandmother was a Tatun and that is one of the old
families of the county.
She came from a large family.
I don't
recall now the names of her brothers, but they were all a longlived people.
Q:
How many were there?
A:
I just don't remember.
Now when you talk to Mrs. Miller down
here (of course, we are related through the Tatun side), she can
fill you in on a great deal of this that I do not know a thing
about or have forgotten.
�22
Q:
Remarkable.
A:
Oh yes. One thing I remember about her was that she was of
the old school that believed in many of the superstitions as
we would call them now.
She thought that when the master of
the house died, if you had bees, and you didn't go out and tell
the bees that the head of the house was gone that . . .(phone
rings).
Q:
You were talking about the bees.
A:
Well when my father died I remember distinctly we had I don't
know how many hives of bees out here in the yard, about where
the pear tree is now.
She tied a black arm band or ribbon or
something around her arm, and she took her cane
her way out there from hive to hive.
and she made
She was saying to each
hive, "The master of the house is dead.
The master of the house
is dead".
Q:
I've never heard of that before,
A:
You haven't.
Well, that's an old New England custom at least.
But I remember distinctly she believing it.
Q:
What other folktales?
A:
Grandmother believed in witches.
There was, I'm not sure,
�23
I don't recall enough of the details to be specific about it,
but among her acquaintances as a young woman, there was someone
who had the name of being a witch.
And if this particular woman
had any grievance against you, she would cast a spell on your
milk cow and it would give bloody milk or completely go dry, or
cast a spell on a child and it would get sick.
There was some
tale that she told about this particular woman planting a little
handful of some sort of bean that she did some incantation over,
and over this little handful of beans when they were planted,
when she harvested, she had a bushel.
I'm not sure of the
amount, 1 just remember some fantastic amount like that.
She believed in witches now, she knew from first hand, you know.
At least in the cultural society in which she grew up, that
was true.
I don't remember so much about, oh, many of the older
sayings about the weather and, of course, people in an earlier
time didn't have the weather report to depend on.
all the signs and importance of the weather.
Grandma knew
I don't recall
that she knew any more than just the regular old things, red
clouds at night, and an east wind and the things like that, the
weather that would naturally follow, so to speak.
Q:
What does a red cloud mean?
A:
Well, red clouds in the morning, sailors take warning; red clouds
at night, sailors' delight.
Of course, atmospheric conditions,
it produced the different things.
An east wind which would
�24
make the smoke from the chimneys settle pretty close to the
ground, that was a pretty good sign that it was going to rain
or weather because, again, atmospheric conditions being what
they were, it would be natural, but that was the way they more
or less examined it. Owls, over the hills and hooting around,
why, in about 3 days you'd have bad weather.
Q:
Groundhogs?
A:
Oh, you'd better believe it.
Grandmother was also a devout
believer in the phases of the moon.
You planted in the moon,
you put a new roof on a building in the moon, you killed briars
and bushes by cutting them on some phase of the moon.
You
planted beans at one time, potatoes at another, and cucumbers,
the sign just had to be just right.
I believe maybe the Twins,
I'm not sure, to have a good crop of cucumbers.
Q:
And she lived this?
A:
Yes, as much as she could.
own sheep.
I have seen her take wool from our
I have helped wash the wool, clean it, and I remember
seeing her spin thread from that wool.
Q:
What about her crafts?
A:
Well, Grandmother could do just about most anything, as far as
I know.
What talent did she have?
She would card and spin and knit and do general sewing.
�25
I don't recall that she did much cooking after I can remember.
I'm sure she did.
She had an idiosyncracy about her food:
bread, especially her cornbread, was unsalted.
her
When mother
baked cornbread there was always a little tiny cake put in the
pan that had no salt in it.
Q:
Why?
A:
I don't remember.
I just don't remember.
I'v e often
wondered if that wasn't one reason she did live to be so old,
that maybe no salt to have any effect on blood pressure or
anything of that sort.
Now I do remember, not only she, but
my mother, and my mother's mother, who lived right up above
us here, saved ashes from the fireplace. Especially if a certain
kind of wood had been burned, the ashes were always saved and
put into an ash hopper, or an old hollow log that was sitting
upon a board.
They kept the good ashes —
wood ashes, I'm not sure —
I guess it was hard-
through the wintertime, and come
spring after having saved up all the meat scraps and grease and
so on through the winter, on a nice warm spring day, an old big
wash pot, big old iron pot fixed up on a tripod, you could make
a fire underneath it, was filled with water.
morning the water was heated.
Very early that
You kept pouring water up in the
ash hopper and gradually it made its way down through —
through —
and came out as pure lye, old brown lye.
seeped
After you got
I don't know how much, but however large the amount was or what
they wanted, then that was put into a wash pot, or wash tub, and
the meat scraps and grease, and so on, and mixed in.
It came out
�26
and made soap.
soap.
I couldn't tell you how, but it made soap—soft
Or cook it a little longer and maybe add a little borax
or something, maybe make hard soap.
That was about the kind of
soap you used for general cleaning and washing.
Q:
About taking a bath —
A:
Oh heavens no!
you didn't have a bathtub?
We had an outdoor "johnnie" winter and summer.
You would go out to the "johnnie" in the wintertime and the
wind blew through the cracks and sift snow all over you.
you got a bath —
it was in a washtub —
And
and you got an all-
over bath about once a week, I'd say.
Q:
You would just wash off?
A:
You just "swiped"
off otherwise.
In the springtime, about the
first day of May was time to go barefoot.
Any child that wasn't
allowed to pull off their shoes and go barefoot from then to a
frost, was a sissy!
The biggest job our mother had was to try to
get our feet washed before we went to bed, because we'd always
have a stubbed toe or scratched foot or something; and it dirty,
it hurt so bad to wash it off.
If possible, we liked to sneak
off to bed without washing our feet.
with that very few times.
Q:
Did you all have feather beds?
A:
Oh yes, I reckon so!
But I tell you, we got by
�27
Q:
What about the politics, the first election that you voted in?
A:
The first election I voted in, uh, let me go back a little bit
and tell you about the elections long before I voted.
In fact,
some of my earliest recollections and especially before
Presidential elections in this area, there were about two things
you'd get into arguments about, politics and religion.
Before
Presidential elections, people's emotions ran pretty high.
Parents didn't even let their children go down to the little
village much on Saturday evenings, when the local gentry gathered
together assisted by a little moonshine.
high
and fights were pretty common.
Emotions got pretty
Again, I don't remember
this, but I do remember hearing that my grandfather was an avid
politician.
More than once he just about climbed some of his
friends, you know —
good friends any other time.
election time, they differed in their politics.
But come
Now, they sort of
lost track of friendship till after the election.
Now I can't
tell you what my reaction was to the first election I voted in.
I suppose I looked forward to it with a great deal of anticipation
because I guess it was a milestone in my life.
I have attained my majority, I can vote.
Well after all,
The first time I voted
was just a regular state and local election.
I had to wait
another 4 years for my first Presidential election.
Q:
You remember who was running?
A:
No, I don't remember too much.
Let's see.
Probably the one
that made the greatest impression on me might've been about the
�28
first time I voted for a President, was Franklin D.
Q:
Was he real popular in this area?
A:
Well, not in the beginning.
But he started activities that
he brought out in programs that he espoused that did tend to
make finances and economic conditions a little more stable.
Yes, he was.
He was a popular person.
Q:
What about Mr. Truman?
A:
Well, everybody through this section that I had any contact
with, was a little bit skeptical of Harry S., but were quite
pleased when he did show enough initiative to take over and do.
He was a peppery little man with his sometime obscenities.
He was a popular man.
Q:
Well, what about Eisenhower?
A:
Everybody liked "Ike" pretty well.
"splash" in this area.
He didn't make a great
Franklin D. was the flamboyant President.
Of course, the President during war times.
From Franklin D. to
John F. Kennedy, I guess those were the two that made the biggest
impression on people or made the biggest impression on me.
Q:
Do you like Kennedy?
�29
A:
Well, he presented a different aspect.
I think young people
had a tendency to identify with him more than any of the
others.
Q:
What about Johnson?
A:
Well, again, personnally, I'm talking from my own ideas now,
my own attitude toward Johnson.
I thought when Johnson came
in as President under the conditions that he had to become
President under, I thought that he conducted himself very
well.
I'd always been a little bit leary of him because he
was such a "wheeler-dealer" all during his earlier political
life, and I guess throughout his presidency.
Frankly, I was
little bit sorry for Johnson during the latter days of his
administration.
Things had just gotten out of hand, and it
looked as if nobody could do anything about it.
He was bearing
the brunt of something that had started years earlier.
Q:
And what about Mr. Nixon?
A:
Well, I guess Mr. Nixon has had to make his mark on the world.
I'm not sure just what my attitude toward Mr. Nixon is.
Sometimes I think he has, and is doing, a remarkable job.
Then again, I begin to think we have a dictator instead of a
President.
Before I pass judgment on Mr. Nixon, I think maybe
I'll have to wait until his term of office is out and do that
in retrospecti'\ action rather
than perspective.
I really don't
�30
know.
I am glad that he has been able to bring things to
a wind-down in Vietnam.
wind down much.
However, I don't think it's going to
All I'm hoping is that we get our POW's out.
And then let them have it!
Q:
What about Vietnam in this area, how did people feel about it?
A:
Well, it was a useless war.
of it.
Most people could see little use
Just as we take our religion seriously - we still believe
in "Mom, God, and apple pie" country and so on.
Most people
through this area, they weren't in favor of going to fight in
Vietnam, or anything of the sort.
But I don't recall anyone who
deliberately left the country, or anything of the sort to keep
out of it.
Q:
So as far as overall policies are concerned, you think Mr.
Roosevelt was good?
A:
Well, he made a bigger impression on me perhaps at that
particular time.
colorful.
He was the most flamboyant, picturesque,
And in that time, when he would come on the radio,
"My fellow Americans" —
why, it would just about make chills
chase up and down your spine!
Q:
What about the law, police officers, etc?
A:
Well, when I was a child, about the only police officer we
ever saw or heard tell of was maybe the County Sheriff or Deputy,
�31
who had a bunch of bloodhounds trying to chase down somebody
who had broken in and stolen something.
knew.
That was about all I
The idea of a bloodhound was enough to make my blood
curdle.'
I don't suppose that other than that, I had much idea
of what law was about, because I just didn't come in contact
with it.
Q:
Do you think that the people, when you were small, were the law?
Like they said "This is right, this is wrong."
A:
I'm not sure, I could not answer that.
I just don't know.
This particular little area through here was pretty law- abiding.
We had an individual or two who was known to be what we called
just a veritable rogue, and everything that got gone was blamed
on one or two individuals, whether they were responsible or not.
I remember very well that we had some hams to disappear from the
old spring house.
We knew where they went.
We didn't have
any proof or anything, but we knew where they went.
Someone broke
in the little service station that was in operation right across
the road and everybody knew pretty well where the things went.
Nobody had any proof, but everybody knew.
Q:
If you could change something back to the way it was, what would
you change?
A:
I have no idea.
�32
Q:
As far as the community is concerned?
A:
Perhaps, if it had been possible or if it were possible
to
bring our little village back to the status and standards it
once had here, it
today would have been a private metropolis.
If we could go back to that time and continue to grow, I've
always wondered what would have happened had our bank and drugstore and all our facilities continued to expand instead become
sort of a ghost town, as it did become.
The chestnuts sort of
all died of blight and the timber supply cut off.
Q:
Looking at Boone, don't you think the people out here have a little
something that they don't find in Boone?
A:
We have a little something that Boone is missing now,
earlier times
in
when Boone was more provincial, long before we
had all the growth.
Even the industry —
I think industry is
the backbone of the county and of the economy.
But yes,
some
of the provincial attitudes and the neighborliness, general
neighborliness, has disappeared.
life.
It was one time a part of
I suppose we still have that to an extent out in most of
the rural areas.
Q:
How do you feel about women's lib?
A:
1 guess I would have to say that I'm in favor of equal rights
�33
for women.
A lot of this so-called stuff I read in here, it
has little interest for me,
except that 1 think a woman
should be paid on the same basis as a man for a job she does just
as well, and sometimes better.
And I have yet to find that.
But there are very few men who I would regard to be my intellectual
superior.
Q:
How would your grandmother feel?
A:
Well, my grandmother on my mother's side was rather conservative.
My grandmother on my father's side was quite conservative.
However, she lived through the Civil War, when she found that she
had to take the old mules or whatever they used, and go out in
the fields and plow.
than you would expect.
She was a little more independent maybe
And, of course, that sense of independence
came because mostly through that she had to sort of take over and
be the head of the house.
Q:
So, you don't think that a woman's place is at the home?
A:
For a woman who wants to make the home and family her life, that's
fine.
For those who want to combine them and have both, that's
fine.
But as far as carrying it to the extent that some of our
women "libbers" are, I think it's mostly to get attention rather
than action.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region.
The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students.
Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU.
An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school.
This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1965-1989
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Scanned by
Wetmore, Dana
Equipment
Hp Scanjet 8200
Scan date
2014-02-11
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Title
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Interview with Ruby Trivette, February 17, 1973
Description
An account of the resource
Ms. Trivette's interview consists of many memories from her childhood including growing up on a farm, what the town of Todd was like, and her experiences in the schoolhouse setting. She then goes further talking about her memories of her education leading up to her teaching career. Although she mentions little on World War II, she talks more in detail about the Great Depression and what its effects were like on the neighborhood. Ms. Trivette also recollects her personal experience with the flood of 1940. She explains what local church was like when she was younger compared to her current experiences with church. Ms. Trivette also speaks of the folktales her grandmother believed in. By the end of the interview, Ms.Trivette discusses politics from her childhood to the present including elections and presidents. While speaking of politics, she mentions past laws and offers her opinion on women's equality.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bullock, Bill
Trivette, Ruby
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2/17/1973
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989, W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Any commercial use of the materials, without the written permission of the Appalachian State University, is strictly prohibited.
Extent
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33 pages
Language
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English
English
Type
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document
Identifier
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111_tape33_RubyTrivette_1973_02_17M001
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Todd, NC
Subject
The topic of the resource
Country life--North Carolina--Todd
Todd (N.C.)--History--20th century
Todd (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century
Ashe County
bartering
Bible Belt
Bloodybones
buckwheat
Christmas
D.W. Graham
Deep Gap
farming
flood of 1940
jackvine
Politics
red cloud
sheep
superstition
Tatun
teacher
Todd
Wilkes
-
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/d47d3f00118356458180d7869cd55996.pdf
a622385fe3ac77894560f3867fc5ad54
PDF Text
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https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/77173558c1b57d0e621ea12a600fdd76.pdf
53e83597abd3511c17eaed4dfd89ab80
PDF Text
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Andrew Jackson Greene Collection
Description
An account of the resource
The Andrew Jackson Greene Collection consists of more than 160 diaries written by Greene who describes Watauga County's education system, including Appalachian State Teachers College, cultural and religious life, and agriculture from 1906 to 1942. <br /><br /><strong>Biographical Note.</strong> Andrew Jackson Greene (March 2, 1883-August 12, 1942) was a life-long resident of Watauga County, North Carolina and instructor in several Watauga schools including Appalachian State Teachers College (A.S.T.C). Greene worked as a farmer, public school teacher, and college professor. Greene was an enthusiastic diarist maintaining regular entries from 1906 to the day before his death. He also recorded A.S.T.C. faculty meetings from January 9, 1915 to May 3, 1940. He married Polly Warren, and they had three children, Ralph, Maxie, and Lester.
Contributor
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Greene, Andrew Jackson, 1883-1942
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/190">AC.105: Andrew Jackson Greene Collection</a>
Date
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1906-1942
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">No Copyright - United States</a>
Document
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Number of pages
45
Dublin Core
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Title
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Diary of Andrew Jackson Greene, Volume 43 [August 26, 1921 - November 13, 1921]
Creator
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Greene, Andrew Jackson, 1883-1942
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a title="Andrew Jackson Greene Collection, 1906-1942" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/190" target="_blank">Andrew Jackson Greene Collection, 1906-1942</a>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1921
Extent
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45.9MB
Language
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English
Identifier
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105_043_1921_0826_1921_1113
Description
An account of the resource
This diary contains daily entries by Andrew Jackson Greene on a range of subjects such as weather, church, school, community events, and travel. The diary contains entries from August 26 through November 13, 1921. Greene travels to a multitude of places throughout this diary some of these places include, Willowdale, Boone, Mabel, Zionville, Deep Gap, Cove Creek, and Elizabethton, Tennessee.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Watauga County (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century
Baptists--Clergy--North Carolina--Watauga County
Greene, Andrew Jackson, 1883-1942
Type
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Text
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">No Copyright – United States</a>
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Diaries
Is Part Of
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<a title="Andrew Jackson "Greene collection" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/39" target="_blank"> Andrew Jackson Greene collection </a>
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Watauga County (N.C.)
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Appalachian Training School
Bethel
Boone
Boone Trail Highway
Bushy Fork
church
Community
Cove Creek
Deep Gap
Elizabethton
Lan Davis
Leonard Hardin
McBride’s Mill
school
sociology
Susan Ledford
Tennessee
Travel
Watauga
Weather
Wilkes
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Oral History Transcript
Appalachian State University • Collection 111, Tape 92
Interviewee: Viola Greer
Interviewer: Karen Ward
16 June 1973
KW: Karen Ward
VG: Viola Greer
This is an interview with Viola Greer by Karen Ward for the Appalachian Oral History Project on
June 14 at Mrs. Greer’s house.
KW: Mama Greer, where were you born?
VG: In Tennessee.
KW: Where?
VG: Crandall, Tennessee.
KW: When did you move to Watauga County?
VG: I didn’t move here until after I was married and my first baby was about…oh, I guess two
years old.
KW: Do you know how long you have lived in Watauga County?
VG: I’ve lived in Watauga County ever since I moved here, then I moved away several different
times and lived other places for a while. I went to west to Montana and lived there for one spell
and then we lived down in Ashe (County) one time, and then we went down to Zach’s Fork near
Lenoir for a few months one time. And all of my children were born here.
KW: In this house?
VG: All but two. Two were born down at mama’s, down the road a little piece. The first that I
went to school was in Ashe County over at Pine Swamp. Then we moved from there to the
Fleetwood School and that’s all the school that I went to.
KW: What year were you born in?
VG: 1906.
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�KW: So that makes you how old?
VG: I was 66 in March.
KW: What were your parent’s names?
VG: Arthur and Martha Nichols.
KW: Where were they born?
VG: In Wilkes County.
KW: Both of them?
VG: Yes, but they moved to Tennessee. Both families (had moved from Wilkes County to
Tennessee) but they didn’t meet until after they moved out there and then got married. The
first four children were born there (Tennessee), two were born in Wilkes County and three in
Ashe County.
KW: So you had nine in your family?
VG: Nine children.
KW: Can you tell me all of their names?
VG: Yes. The oldest was Monroe, then me, then Chow, then Emma, Hattie, Ethel, Florence,
Minnie, and A.F., Jr.
KW: What was your father’s job?
VG: He was a sawmill man and lumbered you know. He bought timber and sawed it, that type
of work.
KW: You told me where you went to school. How long did you go to school?
VG: Well, I didn’t go very much. I just went off and on.
KW: About how many years all together do you guess you went?
VG: Oh, I don’t know. I only went about four or five years. I would go some each year and that’s
all.
KW: How many months out of the year was school going on?
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�VG: Six months.
KW: Six? Did all of your brothers and sisters go to school?
VG: Yes, they all went some. The last ones, well I don’t know. I reckon they finished high school,
but the first ones…we had to stay home and work and they didn’t have a law to make you go to
school and with that big a family we had to work. We farmed and dad had the sawmill too.
KW: Did your family have a big farm or garden?
VG: Oh, yes.
KW: What kind of crops did you all raise?
VG: Oh, corn, potatoes, and beans and just everything.
KW: Did you sell it or just use it (the crops) for yourself?
VG: No, we ate it. The twelve of us ate it.
KW: What were the teachers like in your school?
VG: Well, at that time there was only one teacher. One-room schoolhouses and one teacher.
KW: Were they strict on you?
VG: Yes, it was different to what it is now. You really had to learn and had to get your lessons or
you would be punished. Either whipped or either kept in during all the play periods and dinner
hour you know. Back then every morning we had chapel, you know. The teacher always read
the Bible and then we had prayer and we would sing a couple of hymns, every morning before
we started.
KW: They don’t do that in schools now.
VG: I know and the teachers, they were good and they loved to teach the children religion.
KW: What kind of subjects did you learn?
VG: We had arithmetic, history, geography, and spelling.
KW: You had the same type of subjects that we had.
VG: Yes, we didn’t have science like they do now.
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�KW: Do you think the schools have changed quite a bit?
VG: Oh, yes.
KW: How?
VG: Well, I don’t think they are as strict as they used to be when I went to school. The children
were quiet. They were really quiet. We just played ball or something during our play periods. Of
course there were not a lot of children in one little school, maybe twenty or something like
that.
KW: Is that all?
VG: Yes, because there was a little school in every community you know. Children in each
community went to that school.
KW: Did you ever work anywhere besides just your house?
VG: No.
KW: Just worked in the garden and at your house? What different types of churches were in
your community when you were growing up and at the different places where you lived?
VG: Well, as far as I can remember, I have always gone to the Baptist church. I’ve gone to the
Methodist church only when they were having a revival. When I was young we used to walk up
to Mill Creek when we lived in Ashe (County) when they were having a revival. Some of the
people that lived around us were from there. Their parents would go. We would either walk or
somebody would take a wagon with horses and we would fill the wagon full with everybody.
KW: What church did most people go to?
VG: Well, in all the communities that I lived in, people went to the Baptist church.
KW: Do you think that religion has played an important part in your life?
VG: Oh, yes. Sure do.
KW: How do you think it has?
VG: Well, I wouldn’t know how to explain it. I wouldn’t know what to do if I wasn’t Christian
and didn’t go to church and did all these things. I’ve gone to church all my life, expect for the
period when I was raising my children…I didn’t go very much at that time. But since then, when
I have had a chance, I attended church. I have always gone to the Baptist church everywhere
that I’ve lived. The community church was Baptist.
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�KW: Do you think that the churches that you used to attend have changed with the churches
you go to know?
VG: Yes.
KW: Are they better or different or what?
VG: Well, I think that they might be. They are not as strict as they used to be. I can remember if
a church member did something….for instance, if a girl had a child, they (the members) would
turn her out of the church if she didn’t come and repent. Yes, they used to do that to people
years ago; they would turn them out if they didn’t come back and repent. Now, they don’t
seem to pay any mind to anything that happens.
KW: What kind of sermons did the preachers preach back then?
VG: Oh, I couldn’t tell you. There were ‘old timey’ preachers who didn’t go to the seminary. Just
old country preachers that would preach for hours until you would just about lose your mind.
You would be starved to death and you couldn’t stand it. And they sang a lot.
KW: Did you have a piano or any type of music back then?
VG: No.
KW: Just sang without music?
VG: Some churches had organs, but not very many. We just had somebody…who used what
they called a ‘tuning fork.’ Do you know?
KW: Yes.
VG: Some of the churches had them (tuning fork) and some didn’t.
KW: What about the church that you went to most of the time. What did it have?
VG: Nothing.
KW: You just got there and sang?
VG: Yes. We would have ‘singing schools’ and then the singing leaders would always have a
tuning form. But otherwise we always just had a leader, somebody to lead and we just sang.
KW: Well, it sounds like fun.
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�VG: It was fun. I just loved the old songs but I can’t remember half of them. I can remember a
few. I can remember the preachers preaching so long, most of them did.
KW: Did you ever have any dinners after church on the grounds like they do now?
VG: No. Sometimes, I guess it was ‘homecoming.’ We would have a big dinner.
KW: But you didn’t do it like we do now?
VG: No. Back then we had associations and we always had a lot of good food then.
KW: Can you remember anything about politics when you were growing up?
VG: No, I never paid any mind to politics. In fact, I just didn’t hear much about it. I can
remember when (President) Wilson was elected. That’s the first election that women could
vote. I remember, I was married then. I remember my mother going (to vote) and she didn’t
want to. I was married, but I wasn’t old enough to vote.
KW: How old did they (women) have to be to vote?
VG: Twenty-one.
KW: Twenty-one back then?
VG: Yes.
KW: Well, can you remember how people would tend to vote…Republican or Democrat?
VG: I can’t remember it a bit. Women didn’t talk politics, and you know men…they just went
and voted and back then you didn’t hear anything about it. Now they just really carry on, but
really I can’t (remember). That’s the only election (President Woodrow Wilson) that I ever paid
attention to.
Now, dad didn’t talk politics but he was a Republican and my mother’s people were Democrats.
But she always voted Republican after she started voting and all the children…
KW: Republicans?
VG: Not Ethel Clawson. She married a Democrat and the first time that she ever voted after she
was married was when Eisenhower was elected. But all the rest, like my sister Hattie…she
married a Democrat but they never voted. She’s never voted since she’s been married. She
voted one time before she was married and her husband didn’t vote, so she didn’t vote.
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�KW: Do you know why?
VG: No. Well, she wouldn’t have voted for a Democratic ticket I guess. Maybe she just wasn’t
interested enough to care whether he (her husband) voted or not. But he never did vote, nor
has she ever voted since she’s been married. I doubt she voted in this last election. I don’t
know.
KW: How did people get around for transportation when you were growing up?
VG: They walked and rode in wagons.
KW: Covered wagons?
VG: Some covered and some just bare. Everybody had a team of mules or horses and had a
wagon. When they went somewhere that was too far to walk, they rode a wagon.
KW: Did you walk a lot?
VG: Yes. I’d rather walk than ride the wagons. We walked everywhere we went, unless it was
too far to walk.
KW: How far was ‘too far’ to walk?
VG: Well, when we went down to Wilkes to visit some of dad’s people.
KW: I agree that was a little far.
VG: My mother used to walk from Tennessee to Wilkes (County0. Yes, before she was married
she walked it once a year. She would go back and visit some of her brothers and sisters.
KW: How long did it take her?
VG: Two days I think. They just spent one night…you know back then, whenever it began to get
real late they would stop at somebody’s house and ask if they could spend the night and they
(the house where they stopped) always took them in. Back then people just took-in anybody.
KW: You couldn’t do that today, could you?
VG: No, no.
KW: Can you remember when you saw your first car?
VG: Yes, that was when I was a little girl. I lived in Wilkes (County) and I can’t remember the
man’s name, but they had this T-Model (Ford) and we lived right down the road…a dirt road. I
7
�would see him go back and forth and everybody would just run to see that car.
But in Ashe County when I was just a little girl, the first car I saw there my daddy bought it. A
Buick Touring Car. We would ride the old dirt road you know…and then come to this steep
rocky bank. You would get out and push the car over this bank, ride some more until you came
to another steep area and then push it again.
KW: Can you remember how much cars cost back then?
VG: No.
KW: Not hardly as expensive as they are now.
VG: Lord no. But I don’t remember (the cost). I probably didn’t even know what dad paid for
the one he got. Then my brother when he got grownup, he bought a T-Model.
KW: What did you think when you first saw the car?
VG: Oh, I was scared of it. The first one that I saw, I was scared of it. The car made a lot of
racket and noise and I was really scared of it. I didn’t see how people could get along without a
horse or a mule or something to pull a wagon.
KW: In previous years, did you ever make soap or quilts, or weave?
VG: Oh, I’ve quilted all my life. No, I never weaved.
KW: What about making soap? Did you make soap?
VG: Well, the kind that my mother made was called ‘coal soap.’ People would have a lot of
grease and then they would add lye. I never did make any myself and I can’t remember how
much lye was used. But mama would make soap and she called it ‘coal soap.’ It was white, just
as white and she would cut it up into bars.
I have seen the old soap that people used to make. They would save all the old meat skins and
meat scraps and everything and boil them. I’ve heard mama tell that they made their own lye
out of ashes to eat up the old meat scraps and then it would be yellow and soft.
You just get a handful and put on your clothes and scrubbed them on the board and put a
whole lot in the big old wash pot and boil the clothes. Keep jabbing the clothes with the stick, a
paddle or something…you scrubbed the clothes on the washboard.
KW: You used washboards?
VG: Yes.
8
�KW: How long did it take to wash all your clothes doing that?
VG: Oh, all day. But there were so many clothes to wash for a home and my mother was so
particular. Everything had to be just so clean. You would scrub them to get all the dirt out on
the washboard and then you would put the clothes in the pot and boil them in lye or that soap.
Mama used to just cut that white soap she had made. She just cut up a whole lot of the soap in
the pot and let it dissolve. Then she put the clothes in or had the pot usually hanging on poles
over the fire and you put wood underneath and boiled the clothes.
KW: Boy, I bet it did take a long time. Well, you said that you quilted. Do you still quilt?
VG Yes.
KW: Do you enjoy doing that?
VG: I love it.
KW: Did you do this one here (pointing to a quilt)?
VG: Yes.
KW: That’s pretty. I like that.
VG: I have made quilts all my life.
KW: Really? Do you sell them or give any quilts away, or just keep them?
VG: Oh, I have given them away. But you know, people used to…they had to have lots of quilts
because they didn’t have warm houses like they have now. We just had fireplaces. You had to
have lots of quilts for every winter. Mama made quilts.
I have quilted ever since I was old enough to quilt. Ever since I have been married, I have not
made as many. Well, I’ll say that I haven’t made quilts in maybe two years. I love to make quilts
in the wintertime.
KW: Do you do it with other people? Do you get together?
VG: Sometimes.
KW: I bet that’s fun.
VG: It really is. Last winter, a year ago now, I made three and Ethel, my sister, came up and
helped me finish the last one. I haven’t made any this winter. I’ve been lazy.
9
�KW: Catch up next winter I guess.
VG: I love to piece the tops, all different designs and they are so pretty when you get them
done.
KW: They are pretty. When you were growing up can you remember any ‘outlaws’ in your
days?
VG: No.
KW: None at all? Did you ever hear of any murders or stealing?
VG: Yes, I had heard of stealing’s. I guess there were murderers, but not around here. But over
in Ashe (County) there were a bunch of children…they were about grown…but they would just
steal everything that was loose. They would steal from anybody that had a barn and a lot of
chickens. They would steal the eggs and chickens.
KW: Just for meanness?
VG: Well, I suppose that maybe they would cook the chickens and eat the eggs. I don’t know
what they did with them, but I know that bunch of children used to get our eggs and steal our
chickens. They did that everywhere.
KW: Can you remember any superstitions when you were growing up?
VG: Yes, one was not to walk under a ladder.
KW: That one still exists today.
VG: Yes. Everybody always thought that Friday the 13th was unlucky and everybody would try to
be so careful. Another one was not to cut your fingernails on Sunday.
KW: Why?
VG: I don’t know.
KW: I have never heard that one.
VG: People said that it was ‘bad luck’ to cut your fingernails on Sunday.
KW: Did you ever plant your garden by signs?
VG: Well, I didn’t know what the ‘signs’ were, but my mother always planted by the signs. This
10
�lady Mrs. Trivette that lives across the way over there in the white house…she always planted
by the signs.
KW: A lot of people do that still today.
VG: I know. My mama always said to plant cucumbers and beans when the signs were in the
‘Twins’ (the Gemini astrology sign between May 21 to June 21) because there would be a
higher yield. She would have a lot more beans and cucumbers and they would make kraut.
Well, they still do that and pickle beans. Mama always made it (sauerkraut) when the sign was, I
believe, in the ‘Head.’ And pickled beans.
KW: Well, did the Depression affect your family very much?
VG: No.
KW: Really? You always had what you wanted?
VG: Well, not what we wanted, but you had enough to get by.
KW: Were you married?
VG: Yes.
KW: How many children did you have?
VG: Two. Ages two and three. Fayne was born during the Depression.
KW: Oh, was he?
VG: We bought this home here. Bought the land and we eventually got the house built on it.
We built the house enough so we could live in it and we just kept building. But I really
didn’t….because I have always made gardens and grew all the vegetables. We used to always
keep hogs. We never did keep beef, but we always bought half of beef or something in the fall
then would ‘can’ it.
KW: That helped a lot.
VG: Sure did and we had our own pork you know. I was having a hard time, but I had one
before. I don’t know if they were any different. I still just work as hard as I can.
KW: Good for you.
VG: I love to work.
11
�KW: What was your husband’s job during the Depression?
VG: Truck driver. He owned his own truck and hauled lumber all the time.
KW: You said that you always had enough food during the Depression, right?
VG: Always had enough food. You could take fifty cents and buy a whole shopping bag (of
food).
KW: Could you really?
VG: You could really buy just as much food.
KW: What did you do about lights before electrical appliances came in?
VG: We had lamps, kerosene lamps for several years before we got power. We had two Aladdin
lamps and then just lots of little lamps. Just all over the house and we would go around and
light them.
KW: And blow them out when you went to bed?
VG: Blow them out when you went to bed and light them when you got up. We just washed the
lamp chimneys and trimmed the wicks.
KW: What was your first electrical appliance?
VG: A washing machine and an iron.
KW: Was that after you were married?
VG: Oh, yes. We didn’t have power until, I believe Kent was a baby before we got power
through here. I don’t know how long it’s been…it was the REA (1935 Rural Electrification Act).
KW: That is what you had?
VG: Yes, and we got it just as soon as they were available and then a washing machine and an
iron.
KW: I bet you were tickled with that?
VG: I sure was and I also had a refrigerator. Kerosene I believe and for several years before we
got power. We had a Delco light plant (a small generator that farmers used for electricity). We
had lights and we had a refrigerator that you had to run this plant (the Delco) to build up the
power. We didn’t have (consistent) electricity until the power line came through.
12
�We had this Delco plant for several years before the power line came through. I forgot about
that. We had a building up here in the back with that light plant in it.
KW: Where is it at now?
VG: Oh, daddy sold it years and years ago. I can’t remember who bought it. Somebody back in
the country bought it before they got power. I can’t remember who.
KW: Tell me about some of the homemade remedies you had for medicines when you were
younger?
VG: Well, I’ll just have to tell you what mama did. If some of my children got sick, she doctored
them for years. She would make catnip tea and onion poultice (Onion poultices are used for
moving toxins out through the blood, lymph and skin in cases of bruising, swelling, and
inflammation that causes pain). Now, I don’t know how she made them, but she roasted an
onion poultice and I can’t remember what she put with it. But she would make that when one
was so tight in the chest. Put that on the chest. She used to make pennyroyal tea. Do you know
what pennyroyal is?
KW: No.
VG: Well, it grows out in the fields. It has a little blue flower on it and I don’t know what she
made that for. I mean, I don’t know what she doctored for, but I remember making it. That’s
about all I can remember other than salves and stuff like that. She used Vicks salve as far back
as I can remember it.
KW: Do you remember who was the first doctor in your community?
VG: After I moved up here, Dr. Blackburn. He lived in Todd, but he was our doctor and you had
to ride horseback, the doctor would. He was with me when my first baby was born and when
Fayne was born. Dr. J.B. Hagaman, Sr. was with me when Anna Lee was born.
Dr. Triplett from Wilkes was with me when the rest of them were born. They were all born here
at home.
KW: In your opinion, what do you think makes a good mother?
VG: Well, I think being Christian and I think staying home with your children and raising them
yourself and not leaving them with somebody else. I think correcting them and making them
mind, making them work. All of these things is what I did. I punished them if they didn’t…
KW: How did you punish them?
VG: I whipped them with a hickory (switch). That’s the way I punished them. Walter was always
13
�gone. He was just always away from home and I was just here with the five boys and you know
how they can fight and carry one. So I just whipped (them).
KW: Do you think people raise their children different today?
VG: Oh, yes. You know when I was a girl, girls didn’t ever go anywhere by themselves or with a
boyfriend. There were always somebody with them and they didn’t date like they do now.
What we did on Sunday afternoons were all the neighborhood children would get together and
play ball or some kind of game.
One Sunday we would gather and play at someone’s house and another Sunday, another
house. Just a whole bunch of boys and girls. We played all kinds of games. We used to ride
horses, take turns you know. Someone would take a ride and then another would ride. Things
like that. There was nowhere to go except church.
We went to church and you would come back home and you had dinner. Several would be
there for dinner and we would go home with each other from church and spend the evenings
together and have a good time.
KW: Sounds like you did.
VG: We did have a good time. But everybody went home in time to do up the evening work.
They had their chores to do and they had to go home and do them. They knew better than not
to (to neglect chores) because back then children, they would mind their parents and if they
didn’t they got in trouble. They would tell their children what time to come home and the
children were there at that time.
KW: What did people when they were dating each other?
VG: They went to church and the boys would go home with the girls from church. That was all
we did. We just went to church.
KW: It’s different from today isn’t it?
VG: I know. There were no shows (movies) to go to like they do now. There just wasn’t anything
to do but go to church and sometimes in the fall, we would have corn shuckings. Just a whole
bunch of people getting together…young people and shuck corn and we’d play games. I can’t
remember how the game worked exactly, but every once in a while you would find a red-ear of
corn and you would get a prize for that. I can’t remember what the prize was. That’s all we did.
If children now were like they were back then, they would have had a much better time than
now because there wouldn’t be so many things to do and they would be happy just to get to
play. I always had to work, I didn’t have much time to play. I was the oldest girl and there were
eight children (siblings), so I took care of them, washed and cook. I was always busy.
14
�KW: Okay, mama Greer, I want to ask you one more question. If you could change anything in
this world, what would you change?
VG: There are so many things that I’d change. I wouldn’t know which would be the most
important one. I really don’t. I just don’t know.
KW: Is there more than one thing that you would like to change?
VG: Yes. There are a lot of things that I want to see changed.
KW: Well, tell me one or two of them.
VG: Let me see…..one thing that I would change is the way young people do and I’d also change
a lot of things that the older people do. I’m just ‘old timey’ and I just like things to be done right
and good. I just want everybody to do what’s right.
KW: That’s the best way to be isn’t it?
VG: Oh, I’d just give anything if my children were all Christians and just lived life that I would
love them to. I think that I would be the happiest person in this world to see all my children
‘saved’ and all of them in church with my grandchildren.
END OF INTERVIEW
15
�
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region.
The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students.
Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU.
An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school.
This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1965-1989
Sound
A resource whose content is primarily intended to be rendered as audio.
Artist
Greer, Viola (interviewee)
Ward, Karen (interviewer)
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:33, Making 1uilts
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Viola N. Greer, June 14, 1943
Description
An account of the resource
Viola N. Greer was born on March 27, 1906 in Crandall, Tennessee, moving to Watauga County after she married Walter Greer and had two children Walter and Annie Lee. Her parents were Arthur and Martha Nichols Smith who were from Wilkes County, but had met in Tennessee. Her father bought timber for sawmills. As an adult she lived one year in Montana, then Ashe and Lenoir counties before returning to the Deep Gap area of Watauga County, where her children were reared. She died on November 2, 2003 at the age of 97.
During the interview Mrs. Greer talked about her parents, the importance of religion, quilting, making soap, superstitions such as walking under ladders, and planting by the signs.
Creator
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Greer, Viola N.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
14-Jun-73
Rights
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Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989, W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Any commercial use of the materials, without the written permission of the Appalachian State University, is strictly prohibited.
Format
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MP3
Extent
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15 pages
Language
A language of the resource
English
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
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Watauga County (N.C.)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Greer, Viola N.--Interviews
Christian women--Religious life--North Carolina--Watauga County
Watauga County (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century
Tennessee--Social life and customs--20th century
Quilting--North Carolina--Watauga County
Deep Gap
making quilts
religion
Tennessee
Watauga County N.C.