Ancient Sounds & Wild Orchids

[Music] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] do [Music] my inner body started i guess at a real young age and uh my grandmother marcum she lived with us and uh she liked to pick wild greens and sourdough plankton and white top and stuff like that folk greens we had them every spring so uh she teach me these these plants i still go out there and find them you know that you don't never lose that once you get when you're a child and so i've had to stage in my life i i played a lot you know and so i went across the hill over a little leap hollering and having a grapevine swing there and uh me and my buddies luther tucker and so one day i swing way out of that hauler he's getting up probably in august and i slipped and fell and i fell in a patch of something that had big red berries on and i thought man what is this so i picked off a couple of them killed my granny she said that can sign i said very valuable and uh i said well there's lots of nowhere so uh so i go back over and and uh the very next day and started digging it and uh i sold it to a local fur buyer louise and uh it was eight dollars a pound then but that right there got me interested so i got out in the woods you know later on and then i hunted and trapped and uh i want to know what's around me so i started looking for books that would tell me what's around me this year is called the silver with rogue wart and silvery nail wart is is the the common angle and this year is the three tooth sink foam real rare and this this is the most rare that's a golden heather this shares a leaf off the compass plane and uh that's real rare too and that stuff really lines itself up you know north and south i mean that's just ways i guess it does help cause the design maybe with the sun to ornate some way okay here's a wall larkspur uh his past peak really is it's a beautiful little flower and the rootstock on that they used to harvest that and uh make a pesticide for for chicken lice and i read that somewhere in some botanical book this is one of my favorite orchids right here pink lady slipper and they're all through the appalachian range we've got lots of them here in wayne county sometimes you'll find one like eddie that's albino it'd be snow white so i got me another picture now dad my house this lady slipper out here that's a kentucky lady slipper and uh he was first discovered in state of kentucky by jim doubt here's a round leaf catch fly scene uh celine rotunda portland it's very rare west virginia and uh it's found in wayne county [Music] so this this plant needs pieces of potassium nitrate to grow and uh i put it down along uh clint hayes and uh along the tub river up to about naughty tuck and that's where the threat of the earth changes now this year's uh that's a garage of course that's the spotty quarters corrals of macallan so uh i think i found that along cranberry clay there's one it's a the old doctorizer it's uh it's almost like a western specie but uh sometimes we get them too golden seal yellow root i'll show you a reason they call it yellow root look how hell y'all this is the last count i had about that that goes about about thirty dollars a pound right now and uh there's some place it's pretty plentiful but it's a medical plant i put that with my seneca snake root might make a tea out of that extra this was crawdad hole i never did photograph what i always wanted to they say the kind that goes on the mountain like this that they're working that old blue mud the crawdad is blue too and i see them it's almost black but uh if you get them in your garden and you want to get rid of them all you have to do is drop your marble down each hole what the crawdad does he kills itself trying to push the marble out he can't get a hold of it the blue cold horse hits a medical planter they dig it and harvest it and sell it to uh herb specialty company it's got a pretty good little flower on the earlier frame this seed pod sits on and they'll turn real blue and uh never did dig it i don't i don't think it's not worth very much this little shrub right here is in the we call it the rattle box now this is the first place i've ever seen it and uh it hit a flower that is it flowers better down there where it's got more sunlight and he'd have a little uh seed pod about an inch in diameter and uh when they dry in the fall beer you check that tree and this rattle real good i guess that's where they call them a rattle box tree here i was lucky enough to find the seed pod of rattle box they they could have some seeds in them i think they have it but listen to the rattle level so you can imagine the whole tree full of them and the wind's blowing like that but uh let's see if they just got seeds in get a couple little gray seeds i hear a brown thresh we used to call them tutoring here's a little place common it's it's in the mint family it's uh it's pineal and then there's another met that goes in this kind of earth too it's detonating around that used to be a song about that uh i can't remember this i've been around that sassy fresh tea you'll hear that one okay though this is a guy in beauty uh his recently found i i believe in logan county along the guyan river it's uh it's done past bloom but this is a it's a the purple trillium and uh of course the nettle wheat scared in here and this stuff here is called stone root and some people call it wild sweet potato but it's uh they they collect that root there and sell it at the urban markets so this is just an interesting little place right here too and uh that that's the wild geranium here here's how that stuff grows the wild swoops in front of the stone root never did they know that to try to sell it probably wouldn't bring very much no way all right this is the shooting star and uh it hits past peak though it's got uh you can see the little the two little blossoms are pretty good the rest is set in seed pods and in this cluster right here this is a black cohosh this this is a uh immature plant but the big one says they'll they'll set out a great big blossom almond in the late summer this this plant here that's that's alum root and of course we've got some of the golden rod stuff in here it's just this little little cluster right here see these little things right here let's read the little brown jugs i'll pull one of them off right here you can see it real good looks like a little jug that's your little little seed capsule in there and seed sets right down in the bottom of it and one thing that's really nice about this right here it's got a real good fragrance to it it's it's almost like sass crash first time i've seen that down was down to alison county kentucky and uh i picked the lead put them in my shirt pocket and they just it's just like a faster grass now this this right here is a coat foot ginger i was on a field trip with bill grafton and and the drivers and was in uh up in wyoming county and found out that's the first time i've ever seen that and i just took one little bunch but at home now it's scared all over the solid it hits it's real fragment too and uh this little area right here it's got got quite a bit of a bit of stuff in this wild touch me not of course there's more of that ginger right here and uh it's a bunch of ginseng right there two two bunches and uh i bought them out there this is just a three prongs nice four prong and here's here's the three prongs for ginseng it's a three prong and here's three problems now but this is sweet anus it's like a licorice root and he was used to medicine way back the old days so just in this little circle right here you can see what they are this is a golden rod it won't bloom up in the fall as a putty root orchid it's in the family of the plectrum amelia and it's in a big bloom right now but you locate them in the wintertime this this leaf right here stays green all all winter and it's fairly common it's not really a rarity they shared blood root and so this is christmas burns i've got all kinds of flanks in here p.j harmon our state head bodies about one of the finest men ever met my life he's taught me an awful lot up here on my screen is um a plant that's called the round-leaved it's its latin name is salini rotundifolia salini rotundifolia was not known in west virginia in any kind of historical record until tina hall from the nature conservancy and invited bernard cyrus who was a volunteer for her to go looking for it well he got excited about it called her one day and said i found it i think i found it this plant grows in a sandstone outcrop it's like a little small rock house it's maybe not more than 10 or 12 feet tall of this tan white sandstone and this thing grows right along the edge of that outcrop so when the water drips off that outcrop there'll be a little line and just back in from that that's where this thing grows so we went down and of course we had been with bernard a few times looking for ferns and other things and he said well since you come and bring your guitar we'll pick a little bluegrass i said okay so we we went down and we stayed at his place overnight and met his wife and she fixed a great meal and he has the most amazing uh as you as you may know he has this great place where he he frames pictures he does photography and so we went and he stayed in his guest house and the next morning we took off and we went looking and sure enough this was it and it was in blue and then we started he he hauled our butts all over wayne county looking for as many of those occurrences as we could and i bet we found a dozen of them that day it was it's not that it's so globally rare um but in the state of west virginia is very rare it's only known from the cumberland plateau part of southwestern west virginia the people like him are are not common you know to begin with the era in the 30s of naturalist who who focused on telling us what was in the hills is god he just has a passion for the woods and an incredible eye he loves being out there and just in the woods i don't know too much about them but that that's a that's a spider wart lily it's very unusual beads right here i've seen them over on the queen creek bridge it's pretty hot so use this part down here for the panel and set this away that little bit so there you are papa whip [Music] do [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] oh yeah yeah doesn't like it if you find good roads i won't put you in jeep no big mud holes or anything like that [Music] this is the george tucker place and uh i used to come back here an awful lot and the family all dispersed and everything and one day i come back here he was sleeping and snowing and uh some boys been here vandalized this place and up in the attic is a petition between the walls that stomp them out and uh they laid a real pretty yellow popping board so i took that board out here took it home and resold it and everything and made my make my first dolphin as a popular sport some of this this house right here [Music] that's turkey in the straw but this turkey here had to be in the freezer i got him last spring heard that other day they said that sounded like they ought to be on a movie [Music] first banjo ever i've seen uh a neighbor had a an old little ancient banjo and his name was benny barton he lived about about probably a quarter mile looked like a chicken house i find old man and uh so i drive my bicycle package place there you know so one day i stopped and i chatted with a little bit he said uh come in here so i'm gonna show you something so i got an old bumper in here i want you to hear me pick a tug and uh i don't have the bangers tuned to the tune that he played but the tune he played with kitty puss jump up kid push jump up higher jump up the key push your tails on fire i remember that and i went in there and uh the house had smelled like tobacco and uh cold smoke and that'll bind your hand on the wall he you know this badger here i wouldn't hang it like cocky young has just a big nail and he just he took it just hung it upside down on the wall like that mine's too pretty to scratch it up but anyway uh he said uh he got the banger down and he said get that lamp off the mantel and said lighter up set it on the horse i thought what's going on you know so i had them great old big matches that like that then you know i struck them actually at that length sit on her he should set her right there so and he took that banjo and and held it over that lamp and then his pecker they could hide he said she's getting her now get her now and uh that thing was black taking me back there at length and smoked that so uh that skin heads that they had back in probably groundhog hides and uh they did the sword moisture real easy so uh when that happens then your bridge thinks it out and then you can't play it well he got her all tight like that and he he set his foot up on the heart like that and uh started playing kitty push and he had to chew the background same time he's the same version that hit his spit and at the back was all over that banjo it looked like a big tobacco leaf itself and uh i stopped in every now and then and uh we had a big sweet rusted apple tree out there behind the center house and uh he liked apples and i'd load him up a basket album take up our team [Music] but he didn't last very long uh i don't know how long it was before he passed away and his brother ezra he played the doctor that's what got me started in dolphins well not then but uh later on i i'd go up for the same period of time and uh there should be sitting out under a apple tree and he was completely different from benny he'd have a nice uh black paint zone and white shirt snow white hair and most uh men remember thank him he's sitting under apple tree and no no straight back chair and uh playing this dolphin and uh there's apple trees and bloom them pebbles falling on and but uh then they all time past everything as everything does i went to work for the ep down to big sandy flank that louisiana and uh is his grandson worked right worked with me and uh so one night at the lunch table he said i got pabsto doppler he says come loose a little bit i think you might want to work on it i said yeah probably will so i'm glad to get my hands on it you know but hit boy his rough hit uh the fret worked down through here they had nails and tacks and everything didn't know where the scale was on so i brought home i didn't have no place to work we had one room that wasn't picked up so i kind of shipped little shops in there and uh so uh uh well while i was working out i drove me a pattern off and uh so uh i told my wife i said i'm gonna make you one of them and while she said you can't make that say but that that's made out of uh uh a board that's come out of the old fraser home back on brumby ridge and the story is that he was originally logged that was in a log cabin so when they built the fraser house originally this weatherboard didn't frame them they got the logs from the old house and saw them up and uh some rooms in there and this is black walnut and uh the fragrant household was built in 1847. these logs would prior to that so when they they sealed them rooms and uh then that they papered over with all kinds of flower sacks and everything in the world and back then they had that real thick heavy wallpaper that stuff would come loose and sagged you know then they'd drive they'll tax it great old big ugly looking packs hold that stuff up there so the wood was real real dangerous to work with this year's got several tack holes in it this this nut up here that's genuine bone it's not just a piece of plastic and non-slip keys on but i enjoy playing the dog when you get some real good uh ancient sounds out of them you know and i enjoy different tunes on them that's that tune right there you play there's two or three on there [Music] this tune here is called orphan children and uh i can't find anybody that can find any words to it and uh my mother sung at me one night i just shoot her thing at one time to get a part of it should orphan children have a hard time this world they're giving a piece of brandon told to go to bed that's but that's all i can remember about six or seven years old and uh so i was working on a bangalore party shop one night and uh they just come to me to tune in out there but it was accident where i had the capo set as they moved it into this tuning that i thought you know that sounds like a song that i want to know [Music] do [Music] [Music] do it's got a kind of ancient sound to it i think people didn't have much entertainment and they gathered at somebody's house to have a dance and uh didn't have plane to eat and cook a big supper the boys have a little moonshine the girls have to sleep a little out too i think but when they're nice they want dance a long time yeah so the uh this tune here is called hook and line [Music] do [Music] about 10 or 12 years ago me and the drivers and clete smith who is out looking for lady tresses uh sporanthus and generally you find them in uh old dried cemeteries where there's broom sage and stuff like that so we drove back at uh the newsroom cemetery and when we got there there's a car already parked there and there's two guys down there and we pulled up and got out and got our cameras and tripods and stuff and go out through there and right off the bat we noticed that there's something strange about that there's little sheds built most of the grave not all of them but they had just uh it's probably eight feet long the tent on the side was two or three feet wide and it was built at an angle and had a river on to get the water out and then some of them had these pretty good shelters that had uh you could walk under the roof and even had the drainage pipe [Music] to get the water off that and uh we we had never seen nothing like that and we traveled all over the country now we've traveled in ohio and kentucky and west virginia all over the place and and we generally visit cemeteries because there's some use unusual things are not only just lady dresses you know there's a i gave virginia it grows in there it's kind of considered a rare plane that great big building they got out there was the big cover of it it's where they have their it's on decoration day and uh dinner on you know on sundays whatever family reunions stuff like that but most of the people in this country have forgot about decoration day in my family that was a mandatory thing for everybody kids i picked flowers and put them in courtyards we found any kind of a foil to put around that to make them pretty and we always mowed the graves and break them and set wildflowers on that ain't never did like any kind of plastic flare so there's all kind of story about that feud you know there's some said it happened over uh overhaul and one one story was uh the hatfield girl the mccoy girl was dating hatfield boy then they come down to election and they got into it there and there's just killing and cutting there it just then after done that then there's other members of the family there wasn't mccoys or hatfields either one they got in on some badges now i've become familiar with the mccoy family bud mccoy family it's because uh where i was raised up at they used to they was registered too bud mccoy was uh uh he was a big man he was probably i'd say close to seven feet tall and when i was just a kid a toddler a year 18 months old he'd set me on his shoulder and couldn't get through the door with me they raised about everything they they had was raised on top of hillback and cleared the fields off and raised big patches of sargon and uh so i figured uh you know you can just use so much circle to eat so they they fermented them and and i i guess made the rum out of them but he was known for his whiskey making and uh of course i know he never did get caught back in them days uh after the probationary stuff started it was really rough on moonshiners you know there'd be a whole flock of agents coming and take you away take a jail clock yet but he may have turned the big fall rock up here and i'd give anything to him doesn't seem that because uh this water comes over all time and spring that never goes out even this year it didn't even strictly down now and it run the same flow i kept dab on it every day but he had ferment his corn uh i guess he had a grinder you can't ferment hole kernel corn it won't work and but jeff busted up but a big apple tree down in the lower field down her daddy's and he had mashed set of them apple trees and burrows several barrels he had in the the barn locked up our in the in the cribs and stalled and one time the sheriff come here and uh the sheriff he had pretty bad reputation out around wayne and he brought two or three deputies with him and he let on like he wanted to see hogs so he told buddy he said let's go out the bar and said i want to see your hogs and bud just reached around behind the door and got a 30 30 rifle come on he got him out there and he said now the hogs was in that crib right there he said don't touch the button on none of these doors see back then he had buttons on the doors you know wooden blocks and it didn't have to clash you to call these buttons so that's what they done they looked at them and and uh went on about their business yeah but they come to knows around and hit the mash run from the big hiking creek after they they've done the cooking well they just pour it out in the creek and then they just let go you know because it was there was no group or anything and the boys after they growed up a little bit they they were taken to columbus in cleveland take it out of the country here in charlotte my grandfather markham he made it uh he went to jail over last time he went he was i think he was in his 70s and uh they didn't even lock him in jail he'd just go where he wanted to around the courthouse and then sweep and clean help him in the kitchen stuff like that he's supposed to made real good alcohol and he makes out different things mommy said he made it out but he made brandy beach brandy and different kinds of mixtures of grain i guess you know he learned how to take so much corn so much wheat and so much rye and make it like a bourbon another big great big rock up here in the head of the hauler where i got my spring house that used to be a place where we gonna cool off me and daddy work in the garden and uh we just come down there and fell off naked under that rock and get in there from that waterfall and just like icicles didn't use the cold and uh with the towel and soap with wash off there then he built some tables and uh mama would string beans down there it's only cool place we had we didn't have no air conditioning didn't even have a fan but you get on that rock in there in the summer time and there's always a draft area especially when there's water coming over and i've seen water come over here that would be 20 feet wide when we have a you know a big flood it just hit almost like thunder when it comes down through here the whole thing is a cascade stood past my my place here but uh that water there they say that when you make whiskey out water that the sun's never shined on it it's better water the devil lands now after he uh he finally moved out of kentucky and moved to west virginia and he built his cabin where that uh when you put the rafters on and the roof where you could go upstairs and walk and uh you had shooting portals out there because he could walk around anywhere he wanted to upstairs and shoot shoot out outside and uh but but my dad seen him and uh he's down there somewhere i'll make one one time and you know man i'm sitting on the porch and then they had a little conversation but it way way beyond my time but i still i'd love to have seen some of them i'd like to see no devil answered and i i think some of the tales got blown out of proportion but bud was a big man and a strong man and he he loved my grandfather mark her uh saurus albustars and uh he uh grandpa was a big man he was short but he was big stout and bud hugged him one day told him he said ab i love you like a brother and reached around him and hugged him and broke his ribs on both sides he had to go to the old dock york and get a fan foot around him because he buried he just hugged him hard [Music] [Music] when i was young i guess eight or nine years old i've been porter family upon grassy a lot me and jack porter's about the same age we like the ginseng hunt together and fish we've done a lot of fishing down in the river then pay election stuff and uh we was out there in the yard one night i i we may be in catching catalpa worms or something was out there in the yard and his brother went over i thank his neighbor then saddle up one of the workhorses and he's gonna take him right well he'd come out of our and from the barn he hadn't had to cross the right fork of grassy that is a forward foreign 20 feet with water in and so he went splashing through that water went on up grassy and uh i said wonder where he's going he said he won't go very far maybe back clint moore's place i said let's scare him when he comes back get that horse throw him over yeah it's a good idea well we went got some big old beach limbs and hid in the tall weeds so uh directly here the horse company is coming pretty fast and at the time in which is perfect when he got right right there we jumped out and hollered at her like a big in and uh and thrashed him brush on the ground and that horse went my plum wall hit him on his five feet and uh he's one of the local boys ain't gonna mention his name but he's not on tape but he was a pretty rough boy up in that country then and he had uh on a saddle horn he had a two gallons moonshine one on each side that horn died hanging on that horse that horse went around around he was holding the bridle hit us on his hind feet and when he hit the ground he pulled a pistol that looked like a barrel was it looked like a yard long's made and he rode right around us that pistol copy right on our heads again scared me to death but i thought he's gonna kill us and that was the last time we tried to scoop somebody on a horse but it's all kind of little things like that yeah the best story that jack porter told me was uh an old lady live down there in a log cabin beside the road on main mill creek and somebody i don't even know what her name was but anyway they sent word around when somebody got down with dying you know everybody come in and to do what they could do to help the family and everything and i'm not sure where she maybe not even had a family but uh the porter family all went down there and uh jack could tell you this today what i'm about to tell you he said they sat down there and then said when that old lady died and the spirit left her and he's putting pennies on when they died back then they put their eye down and lay a penny on keep them hold them down said this laying pennies on her eyes and said this the chimney started flooding and dust rolled out of that chamber and said there's a thing flooded out of our said it had a face like a whodall but big long horn feathers on it and in his red and he said it had a great long tail a feathery tail and and said he says the devil said hitler right on on her bed a foot for her bed on the bed poster and see that thing sit around and looked at everybody and uh when hit decide that the old lady was plum gone he went back out to champion and he believes that to this day and he'd get mad at you if you tell him that it didn't that there's something coming out of that chamber one time me and my buddy jeff hughes we worked together he he worked in the storeroom and i worked in the maintenance so we got to see one an awful lot got to be pretty good friends i said you know i said i'm going to take my little trip up the mountains here in a week or so i said would you like to go yeah he said never been up there i said well we're going to go up on the cape on the tee creek and uh i asked him if he had a cape stove and all that stuff i said what have you got to cook and live with i said bring it because we'll probably stay a long time so i spooned around up there and i i found an empty jack daniel whiskey bottle i told laura so i said make me some sweet iced tea and put in there now i'm going to pull him i said i said since he joined the church i said uh he didn't want to talk about liquor women or anything like that you know any kind of sin i don't think they can drink a whiskey to see them at all myself but anyway she fixed that all up put it in the cooler i fixed it where i could just open the cooler and reach back here and get behind me we got up on a 79 79ers before we get that rest off i said i think i'll have me a little dragon you know water he wants some water i said no i should i can't go to get to it i just met jack daniel bottom back there he's saying i'm gonna touch that stuff i just pulled over and reached back there and got it while i set it beside the road i think i had me a little nip he said i didn't think was going to do any drinking on this trip oh i should start out a little bit like i said well heard nothing and so i just turned up and took a great big slug of that tea now they don't like it you know what that's wrong stuff put cork back in it went on up the road and we got up here and we turned off on 19. i reached back here and got her again and that time he gave me a pretty dirty look so uh i then we got down to birch river i was talking kind of slurring to him uh buddy let me tell you something i i gotta fix that i said you got some girls up there now he said you know bernat he's i married manny he said i don't want nothing to do with that now that's why listen your wife won't know a thing to worry about i said how's she gonna know i said we have little little loving around there a little necking around a little bit you know and i said well what ain't nobody know it i said you can't get mad if you don't know it i don't big swig that time i understand down to over half i i drunk pretty much so we got back on top of powell mountain up here we had overlook here i whipped in there i think i just killed her off right here and he he walked away from me he wouldn't even look at me and so i drank the rest of that got out there and i was holding on to the guard rail swerving around and he said you know what he said i don't know what i'm going to do he said if i had a way to get back these i just leave right now i slipped and then take the fall i said can you help me out he said nope you got down there you stay there well i said you never did smell this bottle i booked him nine and i started grinning and he said what kind of trick is his i smell this i said it's iced tea he said well you had me worried [Music] do [Music] another hand for bernard cyrus number seven through all my travels and searching for rare plants i've had a lot of people help me and one of my my favorite uh i can call him a teacher of course that goes it's pj harmon up to helping west virginia uh i've consulted with him quite a bit on different subjects of flora west virginia and we've been on several field trips together and he's the most knowledgeable person that i know of in the state that that handles the floor with virginia on one of my field trips uh in greenbrier county helping the big drag i went there to see the the queen lady slipper and uh on in route there i was walking with this stick right here i had a little major surgery and uh so i stopped to get my breath and i looked down and i seen this rarest orchid of that i guess we'd ever had west virginia a citrus medalodia and it's called a small world pagonia and hit it already bloomed and uh i can say that that caused quite a bit of excitement there that day and uh stan bentley from roanoke he was there and house robert scott schreiber and clete smith and myself i made seven trips up there and flank never did never did show itself no more so uh then a pj harmon now he done a uh soil survey in there to see what kind of soil that's in see if it had some kind of micro or something that made it grow but but never did get no results of it but uh these botanists are running around with it's really strange people and they're in a class of their own and i guess i'm considered in that class too but uh i'm gonna tell a little story about going up to a little place called norton near elkins and uh there's a little orchid blooms up there it's called the three birds and uh his trifoliate triangular and uh it blooms late in in the summer and uh he's triggered by uh if you have a cold rain come through uh it triggers that plant in three days it'll bloom so when it starts blooming uh you find them in there's three on the stem and so they'll raise yourself up start about 10 o'clock and about noon the flower is in full bloom and around two or three o'clock uh hitches withered and and tumbled over you know bent over then when it starts to dry out it'll raise back up and set the seed pod and the seed pod hit it contracts when they wrap and the kind like a wind bank and they don't disperse all at one time we encourage them to different places and uh but i was notified of this location by clete smith in pittsburgh so i'll go there that morning and drive up this uh cold road where they just drip coal in there got in the forest and somebody marked the location with the red flag and so uh the plank's low it's about three or four inches off the ground and uh i took a new army black and laid out there laid in front of the flowers and uh got everything set up waiting for the time to get the whole sequence of it about 11 o'clock he was just getting ready to raise up and i hear the car coming up to holler and i looked i thought it dug jolly coming up here so we're probably too old to pull pranks like this what i about tell but uh uh i thought i'd moon him everybody knows what shooting moon is so uh i got out there in the road and i turned my back to the car and uh was getting ready to to flash the moon and i thought you know i better check this out pretty good here that that don't hardly look like his profile in there so uh cars getting come getting closer and daggone if it wasn't a woman in there and i thought boy i just about made a terrible mistake here so this woman pulled up in a hateful town what are you doing laying there what's wrong with you i said nothing ma'am i said um i'm about this i said um there's a real rare orchid here and i said i'm getting ready to take pictures of it well i guess that's okay i said this land postage you should know i said this i'll leave she said no it's all right go ahead and do what she's going to do i said noel i said to do what i was going to do i said would be a disaster to me she said what i said daddy's about to come here give me the moon now you know what that is she said yeah i said i'm sorry but i want to tell you that that almost happened here she said you know what i'm about 55 years old i've never been mooned and i said you haven't she said i'll tell you what mister said just for the sake of what you thought you were going to do you can really do it i'm going to drive up the road and when i flash my brake lights they gave me a moon i thought well she asked for it i might as well do it so she wrote her about her yard she tapped her brake light i thought well i'm not gonna give her a full moon i'm gonna give her a crescent moon yeah so i just give her a crescent moon you know what she does she gotta give me a full moon so we went with cowboy lingo and i was looking for a fragment pine sand his possibility that i might be the second person in west virginia to ever find one west virginia uh i've heard of people looking for him a lifetime and never seen this right but anyway that that morning we went to look into some big spruce pine forest so that morning i shaved up real good and i used this bay rum shaving lotion and uh i've used it for years and so we got up there and i was behind the group you know we were all going up this little little night hollering this little point right in the middle that was gonna go up that point get some big papa trees up there and look around in there and i have to get in front and pj harmon was behind me well when we reached the flat he said i smell it he said sweet pine shape and he was like a bloodhound he was out there trying to get that wind vein to find that and uh so i'd move on up a little bit he tracked me he must attract me about 100 yards so uh i thought i'd ease that for you i turned around it doesn't smell anything like this right here he never got to worry he just walked off [Music] one time i was out doing a little botany and uh i went doggy tuck in pigeon creek there on uh when you go up pigeon creek on the right-hand side it's just different formation different strata in earth but on the left-hand side there's this big sandstone rock houses big tall cliffs it's a part of that cumberland sand so i was doing botany up for one time i had uh i was recovering from open heart surgery and i had some boys go with me to carry my camera equipment got back in there and great big tall sandstone rocks and then where the wind had blowed uh over the centuries it looks like little pockets back in it so i sent this kid up there to to look and see what's in it if there's anything at all in him in pockets and he said bernie said there's a a fundamental complaint up here and uh i managed to get up for a look at there was 22 of them and i realized what family the plants was belong to they belonged to the mustard family arabias and had lavagate leaves and so i took a couple of them for specimens and brought them home and then dried them out pressed them and everything and i showed them to dr nelson and that forest as they know this plane has never been recorded it's probably it's probably a new species that uh we don't know where it come from and then that spring they had a great forest fire in there and the fire went went up the mountain it just scorched all these plants in there i didn't get to see it bloom and i've not been back in anymore it's hard a really hardy hard place to get to you have a grandpa great grandfather john mike williams his place was at uh on webb branch the original house stood until last year i didn't look up in there but it had to have a loft in it because we you know put the pitch on on the roof and then over time i'm sure it had shingle boards on it and they put some kind of a metal roof on later in years probably in the 30s or 40s and had had a kitchen build onto it dirt floor but anyway they started one night and uh they seen a stick weed come through the the crack in the in the chamber and somebody got fired pull that stick weed out hit on fire well they said that somebody's gonna burn the house down they got the water buckets and stuff and nothing never happened so when daylight come they went out there look and uh there was a barefooted print in the snow there's about two inches of snow that night and several tracks to there because every day he'd been trying to get fire for a long time and they just didn't know it they tracked him and he he made uh several tracks to the pig pen and back and forth big pins then to a rock clip up on the hill and he went up there and his little black boy sat in there about 12 14 years old barefooted and he went out there and got one in pigs just a pig would probably wouldn't weigh eight pounds ten pounds just piglet and he killed that and was trying to roast it over fire he'd built carrying that fire on stick weed so they got him down and brought him down to the house and uh mama took it old bed ticking they'll strap it to bed take him him back in it was almost like canvas and made him a pair of uh flagrants and temporary shoes and they said she baked him a whole big pan of biscuits and gave him a jar of butter and a jar of honey and he left and he was trying he's trying to get north that's probably about time they had what they called at underground railroad when they had a certain place to go to houses and move through but that took me to that rock and showed me that [Music] uh dustin herself i i would say wild turkeys come in here you know how chicken dustin uh and sand to get the lice and stuff off from but something's been activity's been in here you can actually smell an animal it don't smell like a dog or anything but there's presence of animals here i don't see no no snake signs in here nowhere but all out through here there's there's places where they had animals and stuff kept in out here yeah uh you see you take a rock house like this as long as it is it's probably uh from the the rock before we start out out there while i go to the end this is probably uh 300 yards right here is a couple interesting things probably right there they had something i'd say that was storage maybe for potatoes or something that's a dry rock back in there and then at least they had it walled up the family that lived here with probably was a family that pioneered this headless holler or cold you might call it the cove it's real rich all this sandstone has accumulated off here in times maybe real sandy loamy soil down there good for crops and stuff later on in years uh when this all been abandoned the packrest takes over and uh they they get in these ledges and uh they store mushrooms and anything they can find dried leaves and put them back in and that's their winter food and stuff this year's a real old nest there's probably ain't nothing in there they've been a nest back in here but i can't believe it of course the way these sticks look they look like it's been a buzzer's nest buzzer don't have much because they don't carry much foliage or anything there's a few sticks to keep the eggs rolling out hole like that this year sand lines uh old people call them doodle bugs and they're supposed to be the get down you can call them and you'll see the sand moving in there but see if we can find one i guess what happens ant's fault down in there and they trap them with just like a little right here for us they may be dormant right now but most times they're active they'll move around or he might be just playing dead but you see it's got pinchers and uh sand line doodlebug man look here's what a pretty little thing they found the cavity here's got water in little little planks growing in there and everything see some wiggle tails in there i've always heard that stump water would take warts off around oh here one two three four the yellow morels the good kind this year's a prize right here most of them you find these darker colors these are the best ones they are we're gonna have these babies for suffering let's see let's look here with these two right here nice ones here see they're how they blend in with the leaves you can't hardly see them oh that's nice builder ah boy looks like honeycomb look here what a bunch of molly moochers i found that's gonna be good for supper dip them in buttermilk and roll them in a little meal and flowers look down how pretty they'll be these is the best kind out i like the light color ones if the black ones you know you can eat them too but ain't them nice supper time [Music] do [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Music] i think i've had a pretty good life i mean if i had do-over i'd i would do the same thing again [Music] do [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Augusta Heritage Center of Davis & Elkins College

Views: 80,552

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Id: Y19yzGrpnvI

Length: 74min 19sec (4459 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 15 2020