"HIPPY HOUSE: A 40 Year labor of Love" (final edit 2013)

all right so i'm in here some hot summer day hi cooking canning doing some stuff my son comes on running on in mom my mom there's a snake out at the rabbit house so put on the long rubber boots because that's what you do around here when you got snakes and stuff like that the grandmother's yeah yeah so i run into yeah he says to me my mom there's a big old snake up at the rabbit house he says this is as big as my arm and i'm going like yeah right you know put on the boots come go get the gun and you know run on up there to the to the rabbit house sure enough there's this snake that i swear i mean honest i'm not kidding you like this big around and guess what it's a rattlesnake because it's got the rattles and it was you know doing its thing so i blast the thing away take it on up to the take it up to the garden chop off its head and leave bring the snake on down this right here used to be in just a nice big porch open porch and i had a great big huge table on here that i did all my skinning and tanning and you know all that kind of stuff so you know bring it on down here just start you know taking the meat off take chile in it get my skin because i wanted to make a lampshade out of the out of the skin and um chop off its rattle 13 rattles i'm telling you i mean we're talking a big sucker on this guy and everything so get get all the entrails and throw them in a bucket and leave the meat you know the meat that now is laying on the table along with the hide and everything put in the bucket walk on back up to the garden because i want to you know bury everything the head's still there you know with his eyes looking at you and it just it's just there no no body no nothing or anything like that so i've got the shovel with me and i go like this to the to the head and that mouth opens up and clamps down on on the shovel and all this venom all running down no body no nothing okay well that's a lesson right there right okay so go okay bury that guy bury him deep and so he gets all buried i come on come on down come through the house onto the porch my meat is gone off the table it's gone at the time we were milking um a lot of cows and we had tons of cats that loved you know getting getting the milk from from the cow so i'm thinking i'm cursing the cats going damn damn you know do all this work and they took off with my meat so all of a sudden something caught my eye a movement caught my eye i look underneath the table and there is the snake meat moving itself along and i'm telling you the truth i'm telling you the truth isn't it right john so the the the moral of the story which i found out from an old timer that came up soon after all this was happening and i was you know big-eyed and telling him the story going all this good stuff and he laughed he said well lee don't you know snakes don't die till sundown well they got a head on them whether they got a skin on them whether they got inside or not so we took that meat after sundown and we threw it into the fry pan and we ate them [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] and actually somebody gave me this little frog this is honestly a real honest goodness frog and so i found this piece of wood which is sort of cool and the very first thing i thought of that it looked like a tongue so like incorporated the wood and the frog and the gourd and the name of it is there's a frog in my throat i'm doing a series i'm doing a series of masks but i'm also doing lights look at this jeff is this the cutest look at this it's gourds yeah and this is the way you change the bulb there you go this here is the bottom of the board okay so there you go is it the cutest i like it and here's my series of masks this is bad hair day see bad hair day but all the different all the different ones the local arts gallery um there are quite a few artists in the the clinch valley where i live and we all just sort of do our thing and and everything and um a neighbor said hey for for a christmas thing or for you know holiday happening how about if we all just get to get together at my house and um just bring the things that you make and everything like that so several of us came and we we did our thing and then you know the next day it was like you know what let's take this to town this building was vacant and i called mrs richardson and i said mrs richardson i you know i am so and so and i have this idea um about doing a local about doing the gallery with all the local people representing and running it as a co-op and she was very quiet and i thought oh dear she's just going to say you know forget that and she was very quiet and then she said that is the best idea i've heard from my store ever and so that's how we all got started no i never studied art um but i guess there's art in in my person or something because i've always really really enjoyed design and i'm very visual so i mean i look at something and see color and see design and things like that well i was born in missouri and then um my father was killed in war two and so then my mom moved to new york and so i was raised in new york um but right after i graduated from high school i came down to virginia when did you move here uh 1971. oh okay 1971. what brought you here um dropping out went to woodstock and um realized that that there was a that we could that we could we could do this um just drop out and and join the join the countryside well i went to school went to college in virginia intermittent bristol virginia and and knew how fantastic the people are here and how visually beautifully this countryside is so just got into a car and and drove on down and plopped ourselves into rogersville and i just thought to myself this is where i want to live this is where i want to have my kids this is where i want to live what was it about this place that you liked uh a couple of things the big thing i think the people the people were so wonderful so the what i wanted to be is you know generous with your time and not pass judgment on you and because we were sort of known as the hippies and and yet they you know they they just took us as being at face value there and then visually i mean look at this have you ever seen so many colors of green in your life and i think that this ground is so terrific i think that the water here is just so delicious and everything about you know the topography is fantastic this is a 200 acre farm uh it when we first got here it was 90 acres and then over the years different pieces came up next to it and we worked one of the farms at mrs solomon's farm and then when she was too old and she moved to town she sold it to us so we sort of accumulated yeah as we went the story behind this this i don't know this looks like something out of a fairy tale it does doesn't it yeah i'm sleeping beauty here to you know take it down the vines and and find it started as being just a cabin uh a 16 by 24 cabin and just it's all rock underneath here and then um beams or trees that we just cut down off the farm and those were the the beams for the sea in the ceiling and the neighbors kind of built it like the pioneers built it didn't oh yeah yeah with uh with axes and honestly when you see inside you'll see very much what i'm talking about yeah um neighbors brought us stuff everything was like recycled they brought us windows that you know that they didn't want and rocks and everything so that that's how it got started and then as we needed another room then we added uh another room yes yeah went all over looking for the spot the big thing is to for us was um that we wanted we wanted a you know sort of a south facing this is the clinch mountain is behind here and we wanted south facing we wanted water which is right down there we have a spring and we just dug it out and we've got a spring so we didn't want to be able to have to carry water too far um wanted privacy so every you know you look totally around here and yet you know it's it's very open in a way so um the trees were very important to us too i really loved wood and uh so i really got into the wood carving and wood building things and um and just really getting into that so your your house became kind of a pallet is that right oh definitely what do you see inside and not only for myself but the house became um a collection of things that people have made and have given not so much to me but just to add to the house so the house has evolved from not just my effort or john's effort but from everybody uh young calls it the museum young is my son and he calls it the museum because so many people have added to this this place and um and i like that and little kids that will make me something you know 30 years ago i still have that in there and they come back as an adult and go like i can't believe that you still have that dude i made you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] but that's all wisteria and you should see the big purple blooms and everything where's that thing planted is that like a vodka over here oh it's a vine oh god yeah i do you know wisteria i mean it takes houses down huh you know i i have this thing about vines don't i yeah this is neat see all the levels yeah people say did you have like a plan and i said does it look like it so the answer would be yeah yeah yeah sort of well i don't know no i did not i just you built as neat as you needed well this ended up being um the second building because this is the mud room and when you farm and you can leave it open when you farm um i don't know if you've ever done any farming oh a little bit i tell you talk about the wintertime mud and manure and everything else so i i thought so that i just couldn't stand all this stuff in the house itself because it was just it you know it was just like it's endless thing we were milking cows um you know and you like things to be clean and everything right so this became the mud room so that it still that's it still has the label okay and this is my this is all about the you know the selling of eggs and this is my little egg set up and things like that okay all right so come on in here this here is this is the original cabin okay so this is like 16 by 24 and then there was a little loft up here and then we had this was totally open to the ceiling and this is where we had a pit here for cooking and and things like that wow you know and standing in front of here in a bucket and taking a shower like i said before everything is recycled i mean this all this brick came from a house that we tore down in uh pressman's home um all these got everything all the wood stuff you see all came from our farm all the carving that you see i i've done um you know i got into like making different furniture you can see the you know the the carvings there um you know carving here you made a sink out of a tree yeah that's awesome this was one piece and then you know i cut another piece to to make law to make the legs on it yeah let me put this in some water and now we have running water now you coated it with copper and it's lined with copper yep like it was taking its toll and full with the wetness i love this stove where'd you get your stove that i i used to be in real estate and i had this listing of just this wonderful lady and she had to get it i sold the house and she had to get it moved and she gave it to me she gave it to me this is great that's old school right there talk about you talk about cooking at thanksgiving dinner is that wood burning yeah and you still use it oh yeah yeah that's your that's your only stove no i have a little i have a little propane ah okay and things like that this is like this is that's gonna be my buddy here that's for the big meals you got the you know the copper line jacket to put your water in stuff like that yeah okay yeah cool yeah it's great it's great and you made this table and all these shelves and everything table this mug little compost yeah it's a nick jagger lips you know it has the little vegetables on the legs and things like that let's need carrots this is all some of your artwork here yeah yeah and people other people i mean or just people giving me things they'll say oh i saw that little picture and you know i saw it at a yard sale and it just looks like it should be in your house and i'm going okay put it on up there that's how there's so much of this stuff just people giving it to me you're almost running out of room aren't you oh i'll just build another room yeah there you go how do you like my refrigerator is that your full-time refrigerator original this is like we bought this thing or someone gave it to me 40 years ago they built things the last back end they built things to last back then didn't they you know i don't know why people need these great big refrigerators this was our bathing room for a long time which was yet another and i also raised canaries and birds out here and then once we got running water then we built a bathroom and this turned into just being you know is that was that a bathtub there oh no we had a we had a regular we had a regular [Applause] here was this most beautiful elm tree that was outback um it got these i mean we purposely put the house in this area because of this incredible entry i mean this is just a little limb off of it and the things [Music] this is a this is a way to get upstairs to the law is this a real stairwell here in this tree you can climb these stairs for real oh yeah oh yeah so then this became there's a roof have a new cellar for my potatoes and all my canned stuff like right in the mud room there so i thought you know what i really do need something bigger and so then i started digging and when no no no no forget the root cellar let's make it into a really great room so this was the out was this an outside wall right here this was an outside wall and this is underground the ground comes like here oh okay this was a hill that came on down like this and you know then we put this in and so there was just this was just a walkway that was along like so um but once we started digging and saying ooh nice nice room besides my great grandfather made this furniture and which is quite i was going to ask you about your birthday that's cool when did he make that uh 1901 something like that yeah mahogany wow beautiful they don't make stuff like that anymore do they no they do not so i made all this all the little kid furniture i i really got into that and then people said could you make me one so you know and just things like you know the cupboards and you know just the different cupboards and things like that or you know different boxes that i got into into all these furnishings are basically handmade yes yes and bob we got to get bob in there yeah i see bob yeah and the beginning was the the beams these large beams that came out of the woods there and honestly i was here by myself at the time and i thought to myself how am i going to do this and i had a book and i know this sounds really crazy but it showed you how to cut down a tree you make a notch and i mean it wasn't because i didn't know how to do any of this [Applause] no the red story the red story okay and so um so the corn is you know we're harvesting corn and doing all this stuff um i'm out to here pregnant with april um john heads on out it was it was early evening um heading on out and um to go milk go milk cows and i am busy making supper for kurt and young and and all of us and so i'm cooking away cooking away i got a a kerosene light lamp that's you know alongside sitting on one of those rock ledges right there and i'm cooking away and all of a sudden i look up and there is a rat i mean not including his tail but i mean a rat like this big coming down that rock wall right there right next to me so it's like you know one of those deals and you go like okay now what so i i say young young yeah it's my son he's the two of them are in bunk beds up here and i'm going you know um we've got to do so you know got to do something i said okay i know what so he comes running on down and i said to him all right so i grabbed this poker and i say to him and i said go get yourself that big iron fry pan and i said what i'm gonna do is that i'm gonna stab him and then i'm gonna bring him down to the floor and you're gonna take that iron fry pan and you're going to whack him and so i said are you ready and he goes okay so i take this spear and i stab him and he then with his yellow teeth and everything and he is like just like you know going like this at it and just as mad and aggressive and mean as can be and so i say here i come and i i pulled him on over like this his tail hits the kerosene lamp the kerosene lamp falls onto the propane stove catches me on fire i'm on fire and so you know but you got to get them though liz you gotta get him so i bring him on down and i put him down like this and young bless his heart he takes that fry pan and he just whacks the look and crap out of that thing and i'm busy you know taking clothes off and beating on myself and putting the because the cook the the the shelf above there were all cookbooks and everything and they're all on fire and everything so we did it though we did it it was like incredible so john comes in about a half an hour later and we're like you know we're like you can't believe what just happened yeah when april was born she had this incredible red strawberry on the back of her on the back of her head now i don't know whether it was you know related but yeah yeah i don't know the time after your your first husband left he decides this isn't for him this lifestyle's not for him you stayed yeah did you i had the two little boys just explain to me why you thought that that was a good idea to for you to stay by yourself with two sons in the in the wilderness with a very primitive uh housing lodgings um wow i don't know if there was a whole bunch of thought about like you know what i should or shouldn't do i think it was more i am you know he took the car he left me with no money all it was was just this little cabin that was right here and um i did actually go down to see if i could get some food stamps and have them help me and they told me no because i owned the piece of property i didn't owe anything on the piece of property so then it was very much of like okay now what i think that a lot of it jeff is then um it's in your person to be a survivor i think i am that person that goes like i can do this i'm also you know very um stubborn i did love it here i really did love it here i i found i felt like i had found a place that created um that i was able to create myself and be myself um i also felt i had these two beautiful kids that i thought this isn't a bad place to be and i knew that i could i cannot i knew i could survive i knew it i knew i don't know why did you have other options actually i don't think i really did um i sure wasn't going to go back to new york um who do i go to my mom and dad no no no that wasn't gonna happen um i was sort of running from them anyway you know um or their their rules and their structure and that whole way of life that was in new york that i ran from that that we had talked about earlier um what would be another option um maybe a town and a job yeah and a job yeah no no i mean i couldn't think of anything that i was qualified to do i mean what am i going to do well tell me how did you live the first the first year or two first years i traded the young the older people around here um they were very willing to um you know give me food or or pay me to come in and do little jobs for them or big jobs too i mean i remember clara clara jones saying i don't mind paying lee to help me with hay because you know she can fling a bale like no one can or something like that and and actually you know give me you know two dollars or three dollars an hour or whatever um and these were food too i mean these were older people whose parents i mean whose children had moved away had moved away so it was pretty much you know that they just really took me underwing and i really liked them a lot you know they i'd rather live with people like that than um you know people that had a had a you know a structure that was not my lifestyle um we had milk cows so we had our milk we had made our butter i made cheese i you know i mean think of everything the milk cows were like the cornerstone we raised hogs so we always had lots of hog meat and chickens eggs rabbits rabbits just kind of you you were self-sufficient yeah absolutely pioneers for coffee [Laughter] how did your life change over the years before you met john um i became extremely um independent in my mind um and i felt a little bit sorry for john when he came because because i had my own mind by that time and i had things the way that i wanted things to be and um a little bit on that you know a little bit on that you know i can do it i can do it stuff and yeah yeah but he was very tolerant like i really did not want him involved in the any disciplining of the the two kids of my two boys um and as a result it it was it worked out very well because they loved him you know he never yelled at him but he do things like you know say you know back up your mom so um what else just just really learning how to do things um on my own you know how to how to hold something up by by yourself or you know what i mean just or figuring something out it might not be totally the way the proper way but just figuring things out taking a deep breath remember i was saying to you i said let me see how to cut down a tree you know all right now you get a book and you go on again or you know just doing that that sync you know well you didn't have a bunch of time cards so you had time to learn had lots of time to teach yourself yes yeah yeah yeah and it was survival it was survival but the kids and i had a good time we were having a good time and as far as john john was actually raised in new york but i didn't meet him until he came down here he was on a he was on a harley davidson and was passing on through and got lost and came on in the driveway here and said you know i'm looking for and i said oh that's you know somebody that lives over over yonder and um he said uh well would you care if i left the bike here and um you know walk on over the hill and and find this person so when he came back i was in the middle of doing hey and he said can i help you and i said well yeah i don't have any money to pay you but i can give you suffer and he never left oh well how about that yeah that was pretty it was like it was meant to be yeah yeah well what did you think about this woman who was living in the wilderness by herself did you what was your reaction to that i thought she was beautiful and uh as far as uh living in the wilderness it didn't seem that much wilderness you know it was kind of um i don't know it was uh just kind of like paradise i mean it was beautiful and uh kind of reminded me you know like the way the country might have been 100 years ago you know it was it wasn't scary or anything or intimidating it was really nice and beautiful well it must have been kind of a surprise though to find a a beautiful woman living alone i mean that's kind of like something that you would dream about a few a beautiful woman living alone on a farm by herself yeah i guess no just just waiting there for you well i'm not exciting enough telling a story i don't know you know i guess it would be a dream yeah yeah yeah i don't know i just can't imagine that that's that's something you dream about that's not something that really happens you know i guess i mean uh i don't know i don't know what to say about that i guess it does happen things like that do happen you know i don't know why i drove up that road but it was when you first were driving down clinch valley is when i first saw you and you apparently were lost or something because you did a u-turn yeah so i guess it was just you know love chance i think it was meant to be that's what i think you were doing hey or something but i said would you like a hand he said sure i'll fix you some dinner and i came over and had dinner and then spent the night and just stayed just never left but you weren't thinking hey let me head to tennessee because that's where i want to be no no no i didn't even know you weren't thinking that some woman was gonna grab you did you move to tennessee and meet another woman from new york i know isn't that wild yeah yeah yeah yeah he's pretty amazing because i worked at this job for a while and it's pretty good paying jobs and everything it was uh you know it's teamsters union and stuff and so i worked there long enough that i could draw unemployment so what was it six months of unemployment yeah the two of us the or the four of us because it was currently young too you don't have to worry about uh money you know making a living off the land or anything right away and then of course the next year that week it was like uh-oh reality set in reality but it was fun because we we were willing to try things and you know the old timers saying things like um you know that cows in tobacco cows and tobacco yeah they really like this they come up and you know tell us you know stuff like oh it's backers and cows that's how you make money around and we'd say how do you do that you know how do you do that and then i think they really like this because we were doing what they did and i think a lot of their children left and went and got jobs in factories and stuff so the fact that we were doing what they did and that we liked it i think i think well they got a kick out of us too you know because we were so um naive and and yet they could make fun of us or they you know we didn't care you know it was like yes we didn't care yeah because you know we thought they were great they they were a riot these people so you built you built this house by yourself no no it was definitely um a group effort at any given time a lot of friends that came down you know from the good old days up north and they came down and you know it was like just fun just this house was just like a fun house kind of a barn raising type sort of a born raising [Music] you know that that people would all say hey lee you know how about if we come down you know for fourth of july and five people will come and we'll do a porch or we'll will you know make something but then when john came in my life um definitely things um that he became much more of a help and he likes things that are a little more structured and that's why this this new room here is much more much more john's influence than being it's got square corners exactly this this was an outside door an outside wall this is where the stud was for a door to go on into a porch okay well the porch fell down so then you go like all right what do i want to do and i went like you know what i really would love i'd love to have a sunroom because i love plants so voila yeah no kidding how about this wow and they're great nice windows nice lighting wow yeah really great really great lots of wood and i haven't i haven't even finished it yet you know i mean it just it just got comfortable enough i you know i want to do something with the chimney i was originally i was thinking angle on the four corners and then copper paneling and then copper got like so you can't you can't i can't afford copper as a rattlesnake i killed hmm shoot him i see the bullet hole yeah and ate them now we're we're heading upstairs and what it originally it was just a sleeping loft there and we just had like a ladder that went up through the went up through the floor in there but then so then this became like wow aren't we aren't we fancy yeah all right so come on up oh and so remember i was telling you that um that i there were no interior doors and that the the house that i got the columns from that they gave me a bunch of doors and so over the years different people have said you know hell you have new doors and i go yeah yeah and so they came and they got all these doors and i thought to myself my gosh i need to put a door in my house no i got a door okay it doesn't go anywhere but i've got a door okay that's nice all right and you've got an elevator thing too and i have an elevator thing that was given to me by a man that was renovating um a hotel down in florida and i'm john in these days um you know when he has nothing else to do he's going to electrify it yeah so that it actually works because these are like um red glass so yeah yeah that's cool yeah yeah we have a little library in my little sewing nip this is nice oh yeah yeah and every night every morning come back down so this people go like you need to tell me that you climb that every single day every day yeah well of course wow yeah yeah i think it makes me still agile yeah i love those i'm not yeah yeah this is the you know our the whole family who's the portrait that's john and that's lee look at lee oh lord the 19 year old yeah i know and that was 1980 no no 1962. or something this here isn't this gorgeous yeah so what we did now is that this is the bathroom see because this was an outside wall so we did we didn't have a bathroom all this time and needed a bathroom and so we you know we did this and then um jenny coffee painted hand-painted this and it is so gorgeous yeah i mean she used to call me the bird lady because i i raised birds and and i like birds and she put this in because we were doing tobacco and hummingbirds worked the bloom and yeah and all this artwork i mean look at what people do and i mean not him but you know yeah brenda snell and that's hike malachod i mean we used to grow sorghum and cook off sorghum and he sketched that of me you know skimming off skimming off the sorghum isn't it gorgeous yeah that's really nice and it's sort of the story of the farm starting in the winter and going through summer and fall and going back to winter i didn't see that story of the farm oh no but that's okay we ran out of we ran out of uh beams and so that's why it's so low we said i was good enough yeah it's gonna hold yeah yeah you know in these little doors you know and i thought oh i need to have an extension so i i just built an extension okay what we're seeing is the beginning of the the winter time or you know january starting in january and starting to move down here we've got springtime coming on we've got some dogwoods then we're moving into the summertime with the poppies and all this and then back to the you know the full cycle i love that whole cycle thing and back down to winter with the holly and everything like that so you carved this also yeah and built it built believe me i've had a lot of fun doing this it's not um i think a lot of it is like you know what can i what can i do now you know honestly it's it's just fun creating and and challenging yourself you know if you never did this before you know don't be intimidated by it that's my point is you know try it do it you know it'll come out it'll be all right most people flee from the oppressive poverty of appalachia and hard work yeah i mean that's it that really is you got to have you got to have that passion in you i really do believe that in order to um you know keep going or the pride or there's something there's something and i can't even describe it but there's something in a person that makes them want to do the things that they do i had it to to go to the mountains i really did and i don't know why and it is work working hard when i first got there um i certainly didn't know anything about surviving or you know living off the land and i really did depend on the old-timers to help me with milk and cows and making butter and doing all the things that that they had been doing and so you know fast forward then recently i had some young kids come and and work with me and i i found it very curious that that they then were looking at me as being the person that was the old timer and showing them or telling them or just sharing things with them on on how to how to do this or um it came quite naturally you know it wasn't like i was trying to you know be them or i wasn't trying to be um you know a big boss or trying to you know be at a know-it-all it just seemed to come naturally as i think probably that's the way it was when i i was told things and if these young people um they were the same as i was i really do feel that it was just um sort of passing the baton and you know here we here we are you know 40 years later oh my gosh i'm now i'm now them you know i'm now the the old-timers that you know [Music] here's a shovel that was uh hand carved by a man back in the 1930s and it says on it a good motto and the big w here work well and willingly with what you have and then you flip it on over and it says d-u-t-y doing useful things yourself good motto everybody that's kind of your life story isn't it that is it truly is

Channel: GreasyCreek12345

Views: 132,448

Rating: 4.8928938 out of 5

Keywords: hippy, Jeff Bobo, Tennessee, family, single mother, abandoned, artist, travel, architecture, unusual homes

Id: NeHa-GTlKvo

Length: 47min 7sec (2827 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 23 2013