The Best Place to Live - Appalachia

today i'm talking to carolyn and david anderson good friends of mine uh who i've known most of my life or at least they've known me maybe i should say it that way anyway we're going to talk today about their life and about some different things and thoughts they have about appalachia and we'll start with uh who wants to go first david want to go first david you want to tell us where you were born and about your family and kind of that kind of thing and if you've always lived in this area well because going way back some ken folk have done a good job researching the family uh history and as it turns out uh two of my great grandfathers six times removed were irish immigrants both came to this country uh prior to the revolution and one of them uh actually lived on a on a plantation in new jersey not new jersey but in virginia he followed the american revolution he ultimately moved from uh virginia to delaware to north carolina into the western part of north carolina which is which would be bunkum the old buncombe area and about 1840 my great great grandfather moved with his family from buncombe county into the shooting creek area of clay county better known as in the local vernacular shooting creek but he moved there at that time of course this was all cherokee county but he moved there and so essentially we've been in in western north carolina for uh well over 200 years and been in clay county area for 172 years since about 1840 so my math may not be exactly right but it should be something so we've been we've been here for that period of time and i was born as a matter of fact uh about a quarter mile up the creek up the cold here i was born there in 1941 and i've lived here all my life except the the my military service which is four years in the navy from 60 to 64 and then carolyn and i were married and lived in the atlanta area for about eight or nine years so we're pretty well anchored in this in this area did you come from a large family was your family large growing up it was there was actually eight children one one uh daughter died as an infant she was the second born there were seven of us there was four girls and three boys and we're all surviving except the oldest son kenneth who passed away about six years ago so and we also had because of my mother my father all the children and we had an uncle a boy anderson that lived in the household with us all our lives so we had lucky enough to have two father figures but it was it was good what did your mother and father do for a living my mother was a homemaker with seven children you can kind of figure she had a full-time job my dad was a uh he was a carpenter at a stone mason uh back in those days you did whatever jobs that happened to come along but he was a good stone mason and a good old-time carpenter he didn't have the modern power tools that we have now but he he had his basic hand tools hand saws level plum plum bob and a few other things but that's essentially how he made his living later years he managed a uh a small dairy farm for uh mr george midstrip who was the co-director of the campbell folk school i think this was back during the 50s did you did they also grow a garden i'm sure oh we had oh yeah farming and animals that kind of stuff subsistence farming we had of course we had your draft horses we had milk cows milk cattle we raised the food the vegetables and the corn that we had to raise for the for the animals but yes it was a subsistence type for me okay carolyn you wanna want us to tell us about you about your family and growing up well i grew up in well close to warren out of high school and i went to hazel school i grew up in a family of five children i was fourth and my dad worked at ritter lumber company and then went on to work for a feed store in murphy and my mother was a homemaker and i have one brother that's deceased about 12 years ago but the rest of them are still living well your family was actually one of the pioneer families uh moved to clay county in 1905 two wagons across the mountain i guess it's toast squiddy mountain you came probably yeah through tusquiti and my grandpa bought a hundred acres at warren and there was seven boys and five girls in that family and the farm was there but now but it's all cupboards and houses crispy which is something for my grandpa to come back and see all those houses you'd be surprised it would be yeah yeah well why don't both of you maybe start with david and then you carolyn tell us like what's an example of an average day when you as a child with your family how did it start well of course it depends on the age bracket i guess that you have to be in at the time at a very young age we fish this little creek along here greasy creek there's a lot of questions of how it got its name but when i was six years five or six years old we would we would spend time with my double first cousin we were big buddies we spent a lot of time on the creeks fishing we spent time with the older older brother older brothers i should say but we would fish in the summertime or water time we would be lucky enough to get out and go squirrel hunting or rabbit hunting i think it's kind of a typical thing for most country country boys and country girls for that matter doing different things but but that would that would sort of round out i guess what a typical day would be like and again depending on type the time of year we worked the fields and we had to we hold corn and did worked in the garden and whatever whatever chores that that our mother or whatever had to be done we just all buckled in and did it we carried water chopped wood did whatever had to be done because in those days we didn't there was no such thing as electricity a lot of people here they will say we didn't have any electricity well it wasn't that we didn't have any electricity there was not available because the coal we lived in this cove particularly there was no there's no electrical power in the area so closest power would have been down toward murphy and probably some on that brycetown area but when do you think you remember when this area got power i believe i believe we finally got electricity in the house about 1952 51 or 52. i was probably 10 years old and they finally ran the power lines into the cove and uh just don't actually at the time was on the two houses on our my dad's brother albert and uh we got electricity at that time it's about the same time we got electricity yeah yeah so what was your day like carolyn when he was young well just we had wood stove so we had to carry in wood we got carried in water and we carried like a water from a spring for wash day and you were the milkmaid yes i did milk i had a sister but she was afraid of a cow so i added up milk and and we just i went went to school we had to go out and wait the mud to wait on the school bus and what did you like to do for enjoyment well we finally got a tv and i'll see what time do you think would have been in the early 60s i guess we got tv but we played in the woods built playhouses and played in the creek we went to church on sundays and sunday nights and there was a lot of entertainment around we just made our own entertainment yeah that's the best kind um what about the either of you did your families have like traditions that they did when you think about things that uh your family would be excited about whether it's christmas or thanksgiving or birthdays or maybe some other time of the year i think david has a story about sorghum making that was daddy told me pap told me that that was always a happy time of the year when sorghum made him come because it was people get together and almost have a party while they were working together yeah and this in the cold just up the way uh probably less than a quarter about a quarter mile i guess near the log cabin that i was born in that was the uh the site along a little uh creek up there that uh we had a the furnace a matter of fact the remnants of the furnace is still there and my dad and the fleming family the pains and two or three others in the in the main cove would raise their cane crop and then at the right time of course they cut it they'll bring all the start all the cane to the mill and it would take probably two weeks constantly making syrup and it was it was a good time uh matter of fact there was a song i can't remember who did the song it was something along the lines of the time of the year i like the best is the time when the mule walks around the crest the girls put on their gingham dress by and by a by-and-by the air is cold and the ground is to see the air is sweet and the ground is cold sap's going to rise so i've been told it sure is a good time for sargon making oh that's something along those lines yeah yeah that's great yeah um so carolyn did your family have any special things they did christmas or thanksgiving or birthday christmas i remember christmas morning we'd always have tenderloin for breakfast and we didn't have that very often but we did and that still sticks in my memory yeah and yeah we just had good times together in the summertime buying watermelons and we'd all sit around and eat watermelon and enjoyed that very much i can't remember going many places we probably got to go to murphy like once a year before we got we got our school clothes and uh so my dad didn't drive so we had a hard time getting around and i guess your family put up stuff garden oh yeah we had gardens we always had the green beans and all of us fished in to fix those green beans you know before my mother came we had we grew potatoes and corn and you know all the good stuff i remember my dad used to borrow a mule to plow the garden in the spring and that was all that's exciting so we followed the mule around while he was plowing and we picked berries blackberries and and then like a fruit truck would come around and would buy peaches and apples and and mother would put those up and did either of your families have um animals like pigs to slaughter or chickens or that kind of yeah that's always that's a just a given yes in those days i think most of the folks in this particular part of the world you might say we're you could probably go from from brass town to tuscany or from tusquidy to macon county and you can walk in and exactly the same tradition the same lifestyle some people had very little difference yeah you think that comes part of that comes from the the isolated nature of all of appalachia of course we're just talking about here but so many families living in the same general area for multiple generations yes you're right tradition yeah i guess monkey c monkey do yeah you uh uh there's just certain ways to do things i'm sure it was handed down from the generations uh prior to this yeah i don't guess it would have been any different in 1750 than it is yeah at that particular time i'm thinking about the time of the year this is right now this is october so of course people halloween's coming up did you ever hear any stories when you were young about ghosts and hates and stuff was there any anybody trying to scare you or oh there was oh yeah we a matter of fact we're sitting right now at the mouth of the handed branch in the local vernacular yeah a lot of stories uh floating around some of the older folks in the community the fleming family were the was the was the family that settled this cold according to the uh the uh obituary written about benjamin fleming who died in 1938 he was the last surviving civil war veteran in clay county uh his obituary stated that he came to this area into this cove the very place a mile up the creek as a young man that he died at age 95 in 1938 so that kind of because he could have been 10 years old or 12 or whatever but nonetheless the stories uh from that era from the family talk about this cove just here uh people would saw different things headless man and this that and the other you know you take it with a kind of tongue and cheek yeah uh but the old old story was back in the day that if someone had a moonshine still set up or if you start to set your still up the first thing you did was start just uh start spreading rumors about people have seen black panthers and and people have seen headless man and thus and thus so yes to aunt to to prevent you your question there this is this is actually the mouth of a handed branch or the handed holler in the local vernacular again i never heard thought about the or heard the part about the moonshine people warding people away oh yeah so maybe that was why there were so many haunted this i wanted that there's a lot of moonshine being made i don't know so what was your first job carolyn grade nakes when i was like 14 years old i grade eggs for just guests i've been born yeah i'd make something sometimes i make like 14 a week that's really big money yeah big money that day so i always divided my money with my sister and then buy the things that we needed like hairspray yeah personal items yeah but that was my first job david what was yours well uh the first real job i had was i guess i just turned 17 but prior to that you just like most boys you picked up whatever work you could get like in the summertime you get an opportunity to work in the hay fields putting up hay for people this kind of thing and people always used to have the branch banks cleared you know once a year so we did quite a bit of that but the first job i had was actually a logging outfit a neighbor live close by uh max payne uh actually gave me the first job he and his he and his dad had a sawmill and logging operation so that was the first job i had that's 1957 i think uh would have been 1957. and i was making a dollar an hour working with a sawmill and sometimes very infrequently would you get a week a full week the old loggers call it a ringer when you got a full weekend you got a ringer we got very few ringers if it rained you you're out of work can work remember one time we had a uh an ice storm i believe in that must have been 1958. uh we're out of work for two months because she had the ice storm and it froze and you got mud you couldn't get back in the mountains to the mill so it was a tough job but that was the first real job i ever had that's where i first i guess paid in my first social security uh payments carolyn you spent most of your life teaching yes at hazel elementary yeah school there worked 21 years at hayswood elementary what about you david my most of your life your job what did you do after you were out of the service and all that well the first job i had when i got out of the cert out of service in 64 i went to work with frito lake company in atlanta in the chamberley area of atlanta i worked there for a couple of years then i moved on actually to it to a couple other jobs i worked for royal type rider company i was a top rider repairman which which is a craft anymore that's not very very much in demand ultimately i want to work for lockheed aircraft corporation in marietta because in the service i had been in the uh the naval aviation and i learned the airframes were building working on aircraft but lockheed of course we were building the c5a at the time and after that we came back here i guess in 71 and my brother and i went into the construction industry and both of us became and still are licensed general contractors i was a real estate broker until the last few years and i retired uh finally as a real estate appraiser uh about probably about six seven years ago so the i guess the most productive part of my life was actually in the real estate related industry well the old traditions that have been handed down from hundreds of years you see a lot of folks or i seem to see a lot of folks who come into the area and they kind of want to start learning the different things associated with living in the southern appalachian mountains i always felt like it's something you you uh you don't learn it's something you gotta you gotta you gotta live it i think you've got to really really live it to be able to absorb all the different aspects of the life here and a lot of folks will tell you wherever you go you always think about home i was thinking about the mountains and i because i was in the navy back in 1960 i was 19 years old there was never a doubt in my mind that i would come back it's just a good way of life i love it i wouldn't trade for anything in the world and saying the old saying have been made to spain from baghdad to trinidad the two world fairs and the hog calling contest and this is the best place i've found what about you carolyn what do you think's worth celebrating about appalachia well i think the younger generation should respect some of the morals that our ancestors had and i still think it would be good if they would still carry on the tradition of decorating my graves and having homecomings like we used to at church i think that should be carried on it's important it's a good thought but you know in reality it's it's slowly slipping away because our sons because they're they're in their 50s now our youngest i guess is 48 or 49. 49 but a few times we've been able to make them in to come into the decoration to show them where the graves of their ancestors are but i don't know if our grandsons i don't know i did come but well they came came for the dinner on the ground mostly but the importance of it yeah showing respect yeah but i think you know of course carol and i spend a good bit of time uh visiting family and hers and primarily in macon county but we can go to the uh the graves of our great great great great i can go to the grave of my uh for the grave sight of my uh ancestors both of them actually james anderson and martin manning i think it's important to be able to to uh to say that you know i have a great grandfather buried on a mountaintop in flagpole in tennessee uh my sons will never know that yeah somehow ties you back to it's like i like knowing that i well of course the where people are buried that but even like you were talking about being in this same cove where you grew up i like that that i grew i'm living in the same hall or i grew up in and my daddy grew spent part of his growing up years in that and so my grandpa lived there and my great-grandpa lived there part of his life i think of it as walking the same path and that doesn't mean that we want to go back like you know i enjoy modern conveniences i'm not saying that but it's still somehow that that feeds into who you are today i guess like carolyn was talking about makes you think about who you are and how you should act in the world and what's your place in the world i don't know somehow if you're in connected to those you carry them with you somehow yeah you need to look back and uh but you know someone said it's okay to look back but don't stare because if you spend your time staring yeah back there you're you're missing something up front right yeah uh but to me that's one of the most important things and i think probably in the modern times you could probably take a gps machine out and go to each one of these graves and give somebody the coordinates yeah maybe a hundred years from now hey i think i'll go find john anderson willis grave in tennessee you could yeah essentially do that yeah but anyway that's one that's one of the things i believe is not one of the many things that's very important it needs to be it's to be maintained well thank you both for talking to us today i really appreciate it you're very welcome i'm happy to be able to do it maybe you'll let me come back and talk again absolutely any time doors thank you door's always open

Channel: Celebrating Appalachia

Views: 50,008

Rating: 4.9805636 out of 5

Keywords: Appalachian mountains, Appalachia, mountain folk, mountain talk, interview, life stories, history, stories-a history of Appalachia, inside Appalachia, musings from Appalachia, Reflections from Appalachia, Appalachian memories, the real Appalachia, Truths from Appalachia, Clay County, Clay County NC, Hayesville NC, Warne NC, Brasstown NC, Hainted Branch, Ledford genealogy, Anderson genealogy, Haney genealogy, moonshine tricks, wash day, what a ringer means, greasy creek

Id: xy5CJs4hkUc

Length: 26min 37sec (1597 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 18 2020