(bluegrass music) - [Mark] All right,
let me hear your voice. I wanna see how loud you are. - How loud are we? - [Mark] Perfect, perfect, perfect. - I can get a little
louder if you want me to. (Mountain Man laughing) - No, I'm sure you will
with the right questions. (Mountain Man laughing) All right, Mountain Man. - Yeah. - [Mark] Mountain Man,
where'd you grow up? Where are you from originally? - Right here on Straight Creek, buddy. This the only place to grow
up, is on Straight Creek. - [Mark] Tell me about your family. You had both your parents growing up? - Yeah, dad, and all that. Well, dad and them was
raised here, around here. And, we was up the road
there a little ways, was where dad went in when he got married, we was all raised up there. But this is grandma's and
dad's old house place, really. - [Mark] And how would you
describe your childhood? - Beautiful. And we had all ways of fun of running up and down this road here. But, if we went too far...
we went fishing one day, and dad said, "Don't go no
further in the water gap, boys." We go down the road, we
go on by the water gap, you know, we was catching fish. We go on by the water gap, it's a gettin' about this
time, late in the evening, gettin' dark. And, we looked up the road
and here come dad with a limb, was swappin' it on his leg. (Mountain Man laughing) Well, now we know, we figured
he wouldn't whip us, you know. He had a (indistinct) Had a big string of our fish. He wore us out and
said, "Now boys, go home and clean the fish and we'll eat 'em. (Mountian Man laughing) He said, "I told you not to go no further than the water gap." We figured we'd get by
without getting a whippin' if we had that big stringer of fish. So, we, we, we got what they deserved 'cause we disobeyed him. You know. Didn't do what he said. And if it was, these old-timers, if you didn't do what they
said, you got a whippin'. - [Mark] What is a whippin'? - A wearin' out with a limb. - [Mark] With a stick? And the most of the time,
you had to go cut it and get your limb to be whipped with. We'd go get one of them
little clean winter limbs so they'd break quick
and he'd quit whipping. (Mountian Man laughing) - [Mark] What do you, how
do you, how do you say it? Appalachia or Appalachia? - Appalachian or whatever. - [Mark] Yeah. And, it's a beautiful part of the country. - Yeah, it is. I, I
wouldn't live no where else. - [Mark] You're very poor though. - Yeah. - [Mark] Tell me, tell
me about how you grew up. You grew up with electricity,
and running water, and stuff like that? - Well, no, we didn't have no electricity, didn't have no electric
or running water either. We run it out of the,
got it out of the spring. But, they eventually got the
electricity up through here. We had a telephone, they got telephones. Party line. Yeah, you know, "Hey,
let me use the phone." "Hey, get off the phone.
I gotta talk to somebody." That's the only way you get the phone. And we was kids, and that
old cable, they run that, and we'd climb up that pole up in a limb and get ahold of that line and it would knock the
daylights out of ya. (Mountain Man laughing) We thought we'd get up there, hold on it, and see what was going on. We didn't hold on to it long 'cause it was juice on that old, it was just a piece of wire, what it was. - [Mark] So, tell me
about how you grew up. You had transportation? - Yeah. Well, we had, we
got one pair of shoes a year and you better not wear 'em out 'cause you wouldn't, you
wouldn't get no more. And we'd go barefoot in the summertime. We never went nowhere
unless we went barefooted. We'd go fishing down the old creek bank,. We had an old black dog and he killed every snake in front of ya. He didn't matter what kind
come out, he'd kill that snake. We didn't have to worry about the snakes, we had the dog with us. So, when you got down in here, and then we got up here at Iva Taylor's up here at this pond. They had a big strawberry patch. We'd go fishing, we went down, we was gonna crawl over
in his strawberry patch, pick us a bunch of strawberries. We go crawl through them weeds and stuff, crawled up on an old copperhead. Hey, boy, that was the end
of the strawberry gettin'. (Mountain Man laughing) We left town. We had us a water hole up
here, went swimming in. Well, Keith Coldarn had an old collie dog, and if you went swimming and started squalling and a screaming, that dog come in there, and if you didn't get,
go to shore with him, he'd drown ya tryin'
to get ya outta there. We'd get to the shore and
quit, wasn't squalling no more, there was no hollerin' 'cause
the dog'd come in and get ya. He thought you was a drownin', I'd say. - [Mark] Tell me about how you grew up. I assume you were poor? - No, we were, what we raised, we would, what we raised, what we eat. Every summer dad'd buy, we
traded the old peach man, we dread him a coming round. He'd buy 13 bushel of peaches. We had to peel them and can 'em. We put 300 cans of stuff in the cellar and up at the old house. They'd can 300 a year,
every, different stuff. All, everything was canned. You buy nothin' at the
store except necessities, like meal. We take the corn bread,
corn over in Wilhoite, and have it ground. And
that way we got our meal. And dad raised honeybees, and most the time that's
what we used for chewing gum. The wax off it, you
know, well, it was good. (Mountain Man laughing) There wasn't no doubt about that. - [Mark] How much schooling did you get? How far do you go in school? - Huh? - [Mark] How far did you go in school? - Went to a year of high school. - [Mark] And you went to work after that. - Huh? - [Mark] You went to work after that? - Yeah. Well, I got, yeah,
I went to North Carolina. And down there, when I
turned 18, got drafted, you know, to serve. I went down there with my sister. But, now we had, it was, we could walk up and down
this road when we was kids. Nobody locked their doors. Nobody, you could go in. We could go in eat, and if
they had anything left over, cornbread or anything. Go in the house, go in
there in the old cupboard and the wood stove, get what you wanted. Nobody said nothing. Nobody was never missed nothing. But now you can't walk up down here, you have to have big old
bat to beat 'em outta here. No hitch. I don't mind givin' people
stuff, don't mind a helpin' 'em. But, boys, don't steal
somethin' off of me. That makes me madder than (indistinct) And tear somethin' up, if
you're goin' tear somethin' up, tear up your own stuff. Don't go around tearin'
up somebody else's. That's the way I was brought up. Dad'd skin us alive he'd know we'd been out
tearin' somethin' up. We'd, we'd block, we
got out here Halloween, you know, we was a bunch a kids. My sister and Eva Jean, and all them fellers up here next to us, they was dressed up real fat. So, we got a wise ideal. Well, we went up the road and they's comin' up through there. They had pillars and stuff, you know. We stretched a rope cross
road and tripped 'em all. (Mountian Man laughing) They was about to kill us. (Mountian Man laughing) They'd yell, "If I get
ahold of ya, we'll kill ya!" And Minnie up here, we went up to her door, told Minnie, "We gonna trick or treat ya!
And if you don't treat us, we gonna pile you up on with set." She said, "Okay, boys, okay." Well, we did. She come out with a water hose
and drowneded everyone of us. (Mountain Man laughing) She said now, "That's the
treat I'm gonna give ya." She drowneded us. But,
I mean, flat drowneded. And, that's the way it's here. He'd set in with ya, old
man Taylor Brown, in school, he was rough on us. But he was the best teacher,
I'd recommend him to anybody. We went on a field trip now, up on the ship where we come
off, the Bigelow up there, to learn the trees and
the flowers, you know, the leaves, and identify 'em. And, well, we had all the
classroom went up there too. So, we went and got, we
went and got excited. We'd hold hands with them girls. Yeah, we was goin' up through
there a holdin' hands, you know. Old Taylor Brown, he ever had a word. Not even a word. We got back to the classroom in the school up here at Greenhill where it was at, we got back the classroom, Taylor Brown come out and
he said, "Now, boys, girls." He said, "This ain't pup, we
ain't in here for puppy love." He said, "We in here to learn." He wore everybody in there out. He would give every one of 'em a whippin'. The whole classroom. Yeah, and people, they respected him. He'd take us, when we'd
go to the first grade, down the spelling bee. We'd had to spell, in
the first grade book, we'd spell it till we missed a word. We'd go to the second grade book, you'd spell till you
missed more than that. And everybody was competin'
to stay ahead of the other. And he taught me, one thing
he taught me about smokin', he said, "Tobaccer is an Indian weed, from the devil it proceeds. He picks your pockets, burns your clothes, and makes a chimney out of your nose." That's a, I won't never forget
what that, as long as I live. - [Mark] So you never smoked? - No. - [Mark] What about
alcohol or stuff like that? - Nah, I aint never drunk none. I drank a beer every now and then. - [Mark] What about moonshine? - Well, you know, you sip it a little bit. - [Mark] Your family made moonshine? - Made it, I'd like to
have what they made. (Mountain Man chuckling) Everything down this creek made moonshine. They wasn't no house
around here that didn't. - [Mark] Really? - Yeah. They had, when
the revenues come in, they had a signal. Well, if they come in on this one, he'd fire his old shotgun three times. That means the law was in here. And everybody'd leave
their still and come home. And that's the way they
warned one another. Dad made moonshine. He would haul it to, there
was an old colored fellow over there in Georgetown. He bought every gallon
of moonshine dad made. Dad took the back seat of the car out. He'd stack his moonshine
in there on top of it, put a quilt and stuff over it. And the kids would sit
on it in the back seat and he'd take it across
the mountain to town. Take it over there to him. We got over there and he told us, he said, "Boys," he said, "I'd sure like
to have some good wine." And dad didn't fool with
wine, he didn't make no wine. So, we picked a bunch of blackberries and made him up a batch of wine. He come over here and
bought every bit of it. So, we got in a big hurry, we're gonna fix him another batch. We got in a big hurry and jarred it up before it worked off, put it in a closet in the back room. We was a sittin' in there at the fireplace and somethin', pow! Dad said, "What is that?" I don't know, somethin went pow again. We went in there and that
blackberry wine was a blowin' up. It busted jars, running
everywhere in that closet. (Mountain Man laughing) So, we had to, that ended
the blackberry wine makin' right there. We jarred it, if you jar
it before it works off, it'll blow up. - [Mark] Oh, really? - Yeah. - [Mark] So, what kind of jobs
have you had in your life? - I worked in the mines. Worked in the, I worked at
a boiler shop in Chicago. - [Mark] So, you lived
in Chicago for a while? - Yeah. - [Mark] How long? - Yeah, I was up there
probably a year or two when I got laid off,
and I never did go back. - [Mark] How'd you like
living in the big city? - Don't. It'd be all right if
you was out in the country. I lived on the South side,
Tilton High School there. And there was fightin' every
night and all day long. So, we got, we got, we
got, we get up in a day, and I said, "If I ever get
laid off, never comin' back." And I ain't been back
since I got laid off. - [Mark] And you love it
here? You love it here? - Yeah, man. This is the only place to be. - [Mark] What do you
love about Appalachia? - It's better, well, look at it. You can see it. - [Mark] It's beautiful, yeah. - Yeah. - [Mark] But, it's very poor here. - They ain't nobody, Most of your neighbors are just like me. They good neighbors. You've talked to 'em and you go visit 'em. They want to just to be left alone. Don't go up there and
steal this or steal that. Go up there and ask 'em,
and nine times out of 10, they'd give it to ya. That is what it is here. Just this junk a sittin' round here. If you need it and I own
it, I'll give it to ya. But don't come in here and
try to steal it and take it. I mean that ain't no good. Dad'd set us a fire if he
know'd we stole somethin'. We went to old man, at brother of mine, went to old man Anderson Buckheart, on top of Pine Mountain here, had a store. That's where dad'd trade. We'd go up there when we was kids, and the first thing we'd do, had big cracks in the floor where'd he sit with his cash register. And he had them, we'd go around the back
and dive under that floor and look for money. And, every time we'd go
in there under that floor, we'd find enough money to
buy us a pop and a Moonpie. I think he was a feedin' it
down through the floor to us, what he was a doin'. Every time we went up there. That brother of mine, Junior, he got up, he decided he'd steal
him a pack of cigarettes. Dad, he stole that pack of cigarettes. Dad caught him with 'em. Now, he said, "Son, you're
goin' back up there, you gonna pay the old
man for the cigarette. And he said, "You're gonna
wish I hadn't set ya on fire." He come back up, old man Buckheart said, "I seen him get 'em." He said, "I wasn't gonna say nothin'." He said, "'Cause I know
that if Jim bought 'em, found 'em, he'd wear ya
out and bring 'em back." He made, and he'd go up there
and tell the man he was sorry, and pay him for his cigarette. Wouldn't let him have 'em. That's the way we was raised
up, to respect your elder. I mean, they got no respect
for elder people no more. People raised up now,
it's, they don't care. - [Mark] Yeah. What do you think of the
younger generation here? A lot of drugs are being used? - [Mountain Man] Well, a lot of it, yeah. I mean, they just ain't, they
need to get out any of 'em. I did it. Everybody else did it. I think he, all these young generations
need to serve in the Service. I think the draft needs
to be back in his country. 'Cause I was an 18, couldn't find no work, and I went to place the
draft place down there. I said, "Boys, don't be
sending me a bunch of papers like this." I said, "Just go ahead and draft me." Well, I didn't hear from 'em and I got me a good job a working. (Mountain Man laughing) Two weeks after I got
the job, they drafted me. (Mountain Man laughing) - [Mark] Wow. - [Mountain Man] So, there you go. - [Mark] So, Mountain Man, do you consider yourself a hillbilly? - Huh? - [Mark] Do you consider
yourself a hillbilly? - [Mountain Man] No, I
just, it's a hillbilly over. (Mountain Man laughing) That's what I think, right here. You can't give me none of that, bib overalls are the only thing I wear. - [Mark] Yeah. And what do you, how do you define, what
is a hillbilly to you? - [Mountain Man] Plain old country fella like my dad and mom was. They would help, we'd
walk, grandma from here, she'd ride a mule into
Middleport, stay all night, ride that mule on to Hyden
to get some groceries, and then mule back to
Middleport and stay all night, and come on home the next day. And, transportation, it was here, but this but this was a gravel road. Nothin' but gravel on it. You didn't have, didn't have, I think they pitched
that in '53, or '56, one. - [Mark] When did you start
seeing automobiles here? - Huh? - [Mark] When did you start
seeing automobiles here? - That, we had an automobile,
that old cousin of mine did. I'll tell you a good one we pulled on him. He got, we got up on
it, he had an old '55, a '52, I believe it
was, a Chevrolet, a '49. - [Mark] How old are you? - Huh? - [Mark] How old are you? - I'll be, I'm 78. - [Mark] Seventy-eight. - We had some firecrackers in our hand. We got on the running board, and I guess he thought if we was ridin' down the road with him, I guess he thought we was supposed to light them firecrackers. He lit the firecrackers
that we had in our hand. You talkin' 'bout burn.
Boy, were we burn up. And he got him, we got him
to pull, couldn't, you know, it would salt this road
when it froze over. We got him to pull us on
a, on a one of them sleds. Well, he was pullin' us down
the road and he stopped. We kept goin', we couldn't stop, right up and under the truck. (Mountain Man laughing) Came up from behind him on a rope. And we got, my uncle up here, we made us a road down
the hill like this here. Well, we didn't have no sled's. We got all of his hickory bottom chairs. We was up there, had one
of them, they'd fly me. But when it hit bottom,
it'd bust all to pieces. There was no chair left. He about to killed us. And that old school house that
we first went to school in was up here above me here. Two room school. And we got out, my uncle,
he couldn't get backed in. He couldn't get no sugar mud. Well, they made the
moonshine with molasses. We got out there and
got in his smokehouse, and what we didn't just
open one can of molasses. Everybody's got a can, had their fingers in there just eatin'. Buddy, he went plum off
of it when he caught us. He said, "You're destroyin' me." And he said, "You're wastin' it." He said, "It wouldn't be so
bad if you just got one." He said, "Every one of you got one open." But I can take you up here on the hill, and I can find them old
molasses cans up there where they made moonshine
all over the place. But that moonshine ain't
that hard to make, no how. But, you got to know what
you're doin' to make it. 'Cause if you scorch it, if
you puke it, or any of that, Oh, Lord, you can't drink it. So, you're in trouble. - [Mark] So, have you, have you
traveled around the country? - No. The only places I've been
when I was in the service. - [Mark] You went to Chicago. - I've went, yeah, I've been to Chicago. I've been down in Florida. Been down up in, uh, I ain't
been nowhere, hardly. Mud. - [Mark] North Carolina. - North Carolina. Yeah, I was down in
North Carolina one time. And I went to, I took my Basic Training in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Took my AIT in Fort Leonardwood, Missouri. Come back to Fort Eustis, Virginia. I was in Fort Eustis in the shipyard when Kennedy got killed up there. And, that is the most of the, when they told me, I was, I got out of Basic Training, they was gonna send me to a Little Korea. I didn't know what they
were talkin' about. I said, "Ya ain't sendin' me over there." And it went to Fort Leonardwood,
Missouri, is what it was. You had only, you didn't
have, they's nothing. It used to be an old German
prison camp, what it was. So, they, you didn't have nothin' but one little town of Waynesville. And all rest of it, if
you got a weekend pass, was 100 and some miles away. You couldn't do that in a weekend. So, I could go downtown Waynesville, and it was about the size of Harlan, wasn't as big as Harlan.
That's all it was. I stayed on base. You could go to a movie for a quarter, and they had five theaters on there. So, I'd go to all the theaters while there was different movies. It used to be a German
prison camp, what it was. - [Mark] Oh, is that right? - Fort Leonardwood, yeah. They had the old machine
gun mounts and stuff, everything was still there where they kept German prisoners there. - [Mark] Wow. - Yeah, that's where we built,
built bridges, tore it down. Build a bridge, tear it down. Build it, tear it down.
Combat Engineers. Yeah. - [Mark] So has life here gotten easier? Gotten harder? - No, it ain't got no, no harder for me, if you know how to it. I mean, I got, I don't pay no water bill. I get my mountain up here with my water. And my electricity ain't that much. I got, I draw Social Security, but it don't draw enough to pay the bills. That's the reason I have to,
on the side, and you know, I sell a little junk and stuff. Keep my spendin' money. - [Mark] And do you hunt for food? - Oh, yeah, they plenty of... oh, I could feed you all you want. - [Mark] What kind of stuff do you...? - There's plenty a elk
right here, deer too. Turkeys. All that. In here, you can survive
in these mountains if somethin' goes wrong. In these cities, you can't. - [Mark] Yeah. - It's survival out here you can do. And in the city, you can't
do what you can do here. - [Mark] Is that what makes
the Appalachian people so unique, and so strong, and so good? - Yeah, I mean, they survive. - [Mark] They're survivors here? - Yeah. Well, you can do
anything like that, you know. You can go up here, if I'm hungry, I'll go over here and kill me a deer. If I get hungry, I'm gonna feed my family, one way or the other, whether I got a license or not. But if you go into the city, you can't, you probably gotta kill one
of them big rats and eat it. But, who would do that? So, this is a survivor place, basically. - [Mark] - Yeah, so, I like.... - Anybody can. - [Mark] I see your hat.
You voted for Trump? - Voted for Trump, support Trump 100%. - [Mark] What do you like
best about what he's done? - Huh? - [Mark] What do you
like best about Trump? - Buddy, he's done for the
Veterans that nobody'd done. We can go anywhere we
want to see a doctor. Now, he done what he
said he was going to do, he done whatever he said. And I can't see these
fellers, you know, out here, tearing up somethin', burnin' it down. Why don't they go home and
burn their own house down? You know? It, things are wrong,
but there's a way to do it, and a wrong way. Now, if I got somethin' against you, and I can't go to court and settle it, well, they'll get out here
and go burn your house down. It's ridiculous. But I voted for him. I'll vote for him again. - [Mark] Did you have, do you
have any regrets in your life? - No, not really. I had my wife here for 50
years and she passed away. You know, I wish she could still be here. - [Mark] And how many kids do you have? - Huh? - [Mark] How many kids do you have? - I got, let's see, I'd
have to count 'em now. I believe they was seven of 'em. - [Mark] And you raised them? - Yeah. Yeah. - [Mark] They're good kids? - Every one of 'em. - [Mark] That's great. - Hey, you can't, you
can raise, you can't let, you gotta have this one
one over here to raise. If you ain't gonna have
kids and raise 'em, why would I have 'em. You know? But, when I was a kid, we worked up here at
the big old coal line, and, we'd work an hour just so we could go play the
pinball machine. You know? We'd work in there. He said, "Now, boys,"
he said, "if you fellers do a man's work, I'll
pay you a man's pay." We'd go up there and work,
and he pay up 50 cents hour. That's what we got. And we'd go up there and we'd put it back in to Pat's store, in the pinball machine.
That's what we done. But, you can buy, you could buy, he had 'em on sale, a 10 pound block candy at Christmas. Me and that cousin, I told him, I said, "Let's buy one of them." We split on it. I think it was a dollar and a half. And I told him, I said, "Now, we gonna have to eat
this thing for we get home." 'Cause if you don't, the big fellers would
take it away from us. Me and him eat that 10 pound of candy. We never eat no more candy. We was sicker 'an mules. I think it's gonna get wet. - [Mark] Yeah. I think
it's startin' to rain. - Yep. - [Mark] What's the most important lesson you've learned in your life? - Huh? - [Mark] What's the most important lesson you've learned in your
life, in your 78 years? - Well, to do what others, really, I mean, the Bible says, "Do unto others, what you'd have them do un..." I like to be treated just
like I want to treat somebody, I want to be treated the same way. And it, you, you can do
anything you wanna do. And someday, it's gonna come back on you, and you gonna regret. So, I like to be treated
just like everybody else. And, I don't care what color
you are, or how you are. See, grandma was part Indian, other words, there's Indian in all of us. She was a part Cherokee Indian. And years ago, you can't see people tearing
down all the statutes, all the history. And especially this here, this is history. And tearing it down and destroying it, teach it, what it was,
and why it happened. You know? I mean, it's simple. But they want to tear it down, destroy it. And stuff at you can't put back. They tore the old Greenhills School down. They shouldn't have never done that. They shoulda left that there for history. And the old Keywood,
down in to Keywood here, there was a CCC Camp, they tore it down. And history, people woulda come
in here by oodlums to visit and do stuff in that. So, it's, that's history. And, you know, I don't regret nothin' that I've done. - [Mark] are you a religious man? - Huh? - [Mark] Are you religious? - Well, if you ain't, I believe in the Bible that ain't never would
be any joining no church. But, if I believe that if a man does exactly
what that Bible says, he's going to Heaven. I don't care who it is. - [Mark] All right, Mountain Man, thank you so much for talking with me. - Yeah. - [Mark] Very interesting story. - Yeah. - [Mark] And good luck with
whatever you do from here. - Yeah, well, this is country here. - [Mark] Yeah. You're happy here. - Yeah. - [Mark] It's beautiful. - [Mountain Man] I'd rather
be sittin' on a tin can than on a dag burn rocking
chair and have to pay for it. (Mountain Man laughing) You know? You can make anything work. The only way to go. - [Mark] Excellent. Mountain Man, thank you so much. - Yeah. Well, you're welcome. I mean, you can come
around anytime you want to. - [Mark] I'll be back. - And if ya'll want to
come down and stay a week, we'll run you all over this country. (both laughing) - [Mark] How many generations do you think this property's
been in your family? - Well, grandma was 100,
almost 102 when she died. So it's been here ever since. - [Mark] Oh. - They used to own, grandpa and them did, own from the head of the creek,
all this back through here, they used to own. Now, they sold this to
Ashland Land Company and went to Oklahoma. Then then, out there, then they packed up and come back here. And they had saved this, if
they ever wanted to come back. And they come back here. They went and bought a big
farm there in Oklahoma. - [Mark] You're not leaving? - Huh? No. I'm not goin' nowhere. (Mountain Man laughing) I wouldn't give this for
all the cities in the world. - [Mark] It's beautiful here. - Yeah. Well, you got plenty. I can get my water back yonder. It's about 1,000 feet up yonder, where dad and 'em made moonshine. Yeah. That's where ya, there's
people in Chicago and places, that would give their neck to get this.
Howdy partner