Interview with Bernice Shifflett Part of the Shenandoah National Park Oral History Collection, SdArch SNP-111 (formerly SC# 4030) Interview conducted at Bernice Shifflett’s home in Charlottesville, VA By Amanda Moody and an unidentified female on August 29, 1978 Transcribed by Tiffany Cole, August 2010 Key [AM:] Interviewer, Amanda Moody [UF:] Interviewer, Unidentified Female [BS:] Interviewee, Bernice Shifflett [LS:] Interviewee, Lee Shifflett [Notes regarding transcription technique] [unintelligible] Unable to understand more than one word ________ (??) Transcriber’s best guess — Speaker makes abrupt change in sentence Refer to the Baylor University Style Guide for consistency in transcription Total interview length: 02:13:31 min. [Begin audio file, 00:00:01 min.] Amanda Moody: We’re at the home of Mrs. Bernice Shifflett in Charlottesville. And Mrs. Shifflett’s grandson Lee is also here. We’re going to be talking about the Swift Run area where Mrs. Shifflett grew up. And you lived right near Swift Run Gap? Bernice Shifflett: They call it Swift Run Gap now, but when we lived there it was Fern Hill, Virginia. AM: A post office and everything? BS: We had a post office. Ms. Rhoda Haney run the post office. AM: Can you describe the location of your house in relation to the entrance station and the monument? BS: Our house was just behind where the monument is setting now. Just up on the hill. And the church we had was right on this side there. Maybe on this high bank that’s there now. Unidentified Female: So that would be right behind the monument also? BS: No, it’s on this side of the monument. UF: Okay. BS: The church would be on this side of the monument. AM: That was called Fern Hill Church? BS: Fern Hill Church. AM: (unfolding map; AM, BS, and UF proceed to looking at map periodically throughout the interview) I don’t know, these maps are hard to look at. Maybe we’ll wait till after the interview and try and pinpoint the location exactly on these maps. There’s a fire road now that goes behind the monument on this side. Is that an old road? BS: No, well it was an old road. That went up in front of our house. Our house was behind this old road. Now the old road— UF: That was there then? BS: Yeah, oh yes. Cars and wagons and everything went over that cause people lived back there. Mr. Jerry Beasley and Mr. Elmer Lam, different ones lived back there, lots of people. UF: And what year was that? How long did you live there? BS: I was seventeen when I left from there and was born there. And my granddaddy and grandmother lived there. My daddy was born there. UF: In the same place? BS: Yeah. UF: Oh I didn’t know about that. AM: So roughly what period are we talking about? Are we talking about between— BS: I was born in 1916 now. My daddy was born in 18 and 91. UF: And he was born at that same house? BS: Mm-hm. AM: Right at Fern Hill there. UF: Wow. AM: And when did you move out? BS: That’s what’s got me. I thought we moved in ’33, fall of ’33. AM: Do you know about when they put the church up? BS: No. That church was built before I was born, darling. AM: Mrs. Lam was talking about there being a tabernacle for sort of an outdoor meeting place and then they all got together and raised the money for the church. BS: May have far as I know cause she’s older than I am. They may have; I don’t remember that. And I don’t even remember when the church was built, but I know my granddaddy and Uncle Pete Beasley give the land for the church. AM: What was your grandfather’s name? BS: Elian Shifflett. [unintelligible] Shifflett. AM: Okay. On this map you can see his property. I don’t know if you can make that out. Elian Shifflett, right there. UF: So that’s your grandaddy’s land? BS: Yeah. See now the house was setting in Rockingham. He paid taxes in Rockingham County and Greene County because he had— AM: The land was right across. BS: Yeah. See we was born in Rockingham because the house was in Rockingham. UF: Yeah. And your granddaddy was born— BS: He was born in Sandy Bottom. UF: So he then was the one that moved here and bought the land? BS: Yeah. UF: Do you know who he bought it from? BS: Don’t have any idea. UF: Okay. Been a long time? BS: Oh, it’s gotta be long time. Yeah, I don’t have any idea. AM: And here’s, you can see on this one where Mr. Beasley’s land that you were talking about ran. And this is that road that runs behind the monument and circles back into Route 33. So I guess the fire road there still follows that same path. BS: Some of it does. Some of it goes right by Ms. Elsie (BS pronounces this as “Els”) Baugher’s garden. Is she on here? Elian Shifflett. Should be. UF: Is it that? BS: Right there. UF: Yeah. How about that? (laughs) BS: So now this road went between her and my granddaddy. UF: Well, that was all their— BS: Oh sure. UF: That’s really neat. AM: What was Route 33 like then? BS: It wasn’t even hard surface. It was just a dirt road. Cause I was operated on appendicitis when I was thirteen years old and they was working on that road across the mountain when they brought me home from University hospital. And then of course operations was worse than they are now you know. I stayed in the hospital about thirteen days and so sore, that road just jar you to death you know. (laughs) Yeah, so that’s what it was. There’s Mr. Jerry Beasley’s land. AM: He had quite a bit of land, Mr. Beasley. BS: Uh-huh. And then Mr. Norman (??) Lam was right passed him. And we always called him Tommy Morris. What they got here? UF: C.G. Excuse me S.G. BS: Now this Mr. Davis, this is his land in here. He didn’t have any house on his property. And he’d bring his cattle up there in the summer and my granddaddy taken care of them. AM: Oh. That was kind of the exception there. It seems that most of the people you’re pointing to actually lived on their own land. BS: Most of them did. AM: Now I know in other areas that are in the Park now, most of the people didn’t live on land. They’d live over you know everywhere from Harrisonburg down to Waynesboro and then just graze cattle up there. BS: That’s right. Some of them did. But now Mr. Davis was the only one around us that did that that I knew of. UF: And he lived down in the Valley? BS: Mm-hm. He lived over there someplace cause he used to come up Daddy’d take care of his cattle. See my daddy’s land being right here, it joined in here someplace. AM: Right where this land is here. BS: Yeah. AM: Did Mr. Davis pay your father or your grandfather to look after the cow? Did he give some beef or something in return? BS: I don’t remember what he did anymore. They was just friends. If he did any, I don’t know. UF: Now do you know all these people that are on this tract map? You go visiting to various homes at different times? BS: We would go back here. Mr. Daniel Shifflett. Now my granddaddy used to go up there. They were kin. Sam Morris, Samuel Morris is what we’d call him. My granddaddy would go back there on Sundays. On Sundays’d be the only time you do much visiting. And he’d go back there on Sunday and we’d go with him lots of times. Now we used to go back here to Mr. Tommy Morris we’d call him, but this looks like S.G. Morris which it— UF: Well would that be [unintelligible]? BS: No that’s Sam Morris, Samuel Morris. I know him. Mr. Roach. AM: Well I guess a lot of them they called them by you know— BS: Yeah, now I don’t know, but this is supposed to be Mr. Tommy Morris which of course they could call him something else. And we used to go back there and play with his children. And they used to come over to our house and play. AM: What did you play? BS: We’d play drop handkerchief and play ball. Stuff like that you know. UF: That’s a good long way isn’t it? BS: No, it wasn’t very far. We’d go this road. (laughs) Right on back there. UF: What’s the scale on that? AM: Oh I don’t know. (BS and AM talk over each other) AM: —USGS map was just a little tiny corner and here it’s for the whole area. UF: Oh. Okay, okay. AM: I’m gonna have to take a good look at that map and figure out which house is which on this one, on this 1928 USGS map here. UF: You can draw a picture of your house on here. AM: Yeah, it’s one of those little boxes, but it’s so tiny, it’s hard to tell. (fumbling with map) It’s hard to even see the roads on there. They’re all on there. BS: Now see there’s Rockingham-Greene County. It’d have to be right in here someplace. There’s the trail! That goes right up to our spring, the trail does. That trail leads right to— AM: The Appalachian Trail? BS: Mm-hm. Right to the trail, leads right to the spring. And when you get up there it’s a big old tree, the spring is dry. But it’s got a hole underneath that tree. UF: Now you can see that right from the Appalachian Trail? BS: You pass right by it. UF: Because I went up there and I found your gate post. BS: Yeah. You found— UF: And I went past the gate post and I went on up and it was real wet there. BS: Did you go to the right or the left? UF: Well it kept on the trail. And then I went up a little bit farther and I finally went off into the left and I was looking for your chimney. BS: No, you wouldn’t know it then with everything growed up, but I could take you right to the place. UF: I found a lot of those cucumber trees in there. BS: Now just before you got up to the house this cucumber tree was on the fence down before you got up where we lived. UF: Now where was your spring in relation to that? I was just walking up the Appalachian Trail— BS: It went straight on up that Appalachian Trail. It’s some big trees up there, some big birch trees. It was about three or four of them up that path. It’s the Appalachian Trail now. And right above those big birch trees on the right is this big old tree and I think that’s a birch tree. I’m not sure. And it has a hole back under it now. And that was the spring, but see the spring’s dry now, but I’m cutting stream off for the water of the places, you know. They have a big tank up there. And that was our spring. UF: And that would be how far away from your gate post? BS: Oh I don’t have any idea, but it wouldn’t be very far. UF: So I should have seen some birch trees coming up that trail? BS: Mm-hm. UF: And that would be on which side of the trail? BS: On the right going up there. UF: And then your house would have been on the left. BS: Been on the left. UF: Well I’ll have to go back in the fall when I can see. BS: Oh, I’d love to go with you and show you. I could show you the cellar, I could show you where the chimney fell, and I could show you the spring, show you the big birch tree where my brother shot the hole in it. UF: (laughs) BS: And right below the spring is where we had our milk box that the water run right through it. See they have a hole through here and a hole through the bottom of it up so high, just high enough that jars would sit in. AM: About one foot? BS: Something like that. You know you have a milk jar and so if you know what I’m talking about. AM and UF: Uh-huh, yeah. BS: Well [unintelligible] would come up just so far so it wouldn’t get in that, you know. Water would go through that at all times. It’d never stop in the box, you know. It’d go through this end, come out this end on down branch side. Now, right in front of the house where we lived, the branch run. And we used to have walnuts up there, but they wasn’t the black walnuts, they was the long walnuts. Now, I forget what they call those walnuts. (speaking to LS) Do you remember? But it was a long walnut, not a round walnut and oh, they were so good. Butternut I believe. UF: White, white walnuts. Yeah, butternut. BS: Butternut. UF: Sure. BS: That’s what they called them. But I can’t find a tree now that has any on and we used to have lots of them there, we called it the swamp out there you see. UF: It’s still really marshy out there. BS: Yeah. UF: And I saw the creek. I must have been really close. AM: Where does that creek run into? BS: It comes on down to the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains on 33. You know it’s watery in there. It would go in behind the church; it run in behind the church. UF: So the creek was between your house and the church? BS: No, it run behind our house and behind the church. It run between our house and Ms. Elsie Baugher. UF: Okay. BS: And my daddy, it was a big old tree out there and I don’t know whether somebody cut it down or what happened. Anyway it was a big stump like this and that’s where he used to file saws for people. They’d bring them to him and he’d file them. And he’d fixed a place in the stump that he could set the saw down in and spin there and just file those saws. UF: And people would pay him for that? BS: Yeah, they’d pay him for it. And he used to file saws for different, well they’d bring them from everywhere for him to file saws. UF: He did a lot of things didn’t he? BS: Oh, yes. And then another thing too. He did a lot of logging. He had, towards the last he had big trucks, two big trucks. And they had a sawmill down here in Greene County and they used to do a lot of logging. UF: Yeah. Did he do that for somebody else or it was his own sawmill? BS: No, Mr. Charlie Gaynor’s sawmill. UF: Charlie Gaynor? BS: Charlie Gaynor. And he was from Elkton. And they would cut the logs and take them to him and they’d pay him for the logs you see. And haul it off. And lots of times he’d haul the lumber off for him too. And there was trucks. AM: They got cash for all that right? BS: Yeah, they got paid for it. Mm-hm. UF: Now before that, what did he do mostly? BS: He run a service station. And had a little store there. UF: And you don’t know when that was built? Was that there your whole life? BS: No. I know when that was built, but I don’t know what year it was. AM: How old were you, do you remember? BS: About thirteen. UF: When the service station was built? BS: Uh-huh. UF: And the little store, what did he sell? BS: Well, he sold tobacco, and cigarettes, and candy, chewing gum. Stuff like that in the store. AM: Didn’t Mr. Haney have a store and service station too? BS: Yeah, he had a store; he didn’t have a service station. AM: I see. BS: He had the store. AM: So he had more produce and things? BS: Oh, yes he did. You could get most anything there you wanted. UF: Groceries and things like that? BS: Mm-hm, yeah. That was Mr. John Haney. AM: Right. UF: Is that where you went for the things that you needed? BS: Yeah, lots of times. We’d go there unless you was gonna do big shopping you know or something. But he had most anything anybody wanted up on the mountain. UF: What kinds of things did you have to buy? BS: Oh, sugar and coffee and kerosene. That was about it. AM: Did you buy all that with cash? BS: No. We’d take things in like eggs and butter and sometimes cash. But see you’d have eggs and butter more than you could ever use. And then too my mother sold milk and butter to the hotel there a long time. AM: The Swift Run Inn? BS: Hm? AM: The Swift Run Mountain Inn there? BS: Yeah. AM: Now where was that? BS: And Mr. Mundy run that at the time. AM: Mr. Mundy? BS: Mundy. AM: Was that pretty much down on the Elkton side? BS: Yeah, it was on the Elkton side. It was in the Rockingham County. AM: How far from the gap? BS: Oh just a little ways, just right below there where the monument’s sitting now. Right in there. Well, do you remember the hotel when we was there? You know they hadn’t been too long— UF: No, I don’t remember. (rustling noise while UF retrieves photo) Here’s a photograph. They’re calling it the Mountain Inn. Do you remember it being called that? BS: Huh-uh. UF: You called it the Swift Run Hotel? BS: Mm-hm. UF: Is that what it looked like? BS: Yeah. UF: That’s it? BS: Mm-hm. That’s our little place. UF: It was red brick, is that correct? It doesn’t really show very well on that photograph, but it says some place that there were a pile of bricks there after the building was torn down and they thought that’s what it was from. BS: It don’t seem like to me that that hotel was brick, but it—. He had a lot of little cabins behind here that was rented. He’d rent to different people, you know. AM: What side of 33 was it on? BS: On the right side now going down the mountain. AM: Who’s land was it on? Did Mundy own the land too? BS: I guess he did, but I don’t know who he bought that land from. AM: I can’t find his name on the map that’s why I asked. BS: Marvin Mundy. UF: Marvin Mundy? BS: Mm-hm. AM: Let’s see. Going down the hill I see the land, I see McDaniels, Hensley, I see the Shipp estate. Was it on the Shipp estate by any chance? BS: Shipp? AM: That name sounds familiar to me. Baugher. BS: I don’t know who he bought that land from. He came from Harrisonburg over there and put that (trails off) UF: Maybe it was farther off the map. AM: Yeah. UF: Now that would have been how far from your house? The hotel? BS: About three hundred yards I guess maybe. Very close. UF: And the gas station and the service station was right beside that? BS: See the service station that where my daddy built was on my granddaddy’s land. See that was at the end of the land. Right behind where the church set. AM: So it looked like the hotel would almost have to be on Haney’s land from the looks of the map. BS: I can’t figure what that little, now it was a little, see Mr. John Haney lived over here. We lived up here and Ms. Elsie lived down here. That was just a little peak in there. Now I don’t have no idea who owned that. AM: There’s a name on here, there’s a Knapp that points to a little tiny track. K-n-a-p-p. BS: That was on the right hand side going down the mountain. That may be close to where they’ve got the road now you see. UF: The hotel then was on the left hand side going down the mountain? BS: Yeah. UF: Okay. AM: Smith? BS: That’s Quint Smith. He lived on down farther. Now that’s where our school was at. AM: It was on his land? UF: Oh and what’d you call the school? BS: Sunnyside. UF: Sunnyside School, okay. AM: Was the church on your land? BS: Yeah, it was built on Daddy’s land. And Uncle Pete Beasley’s, I think both of them must have run in there together. I think Dad and Uncle Pete Beasley give that land. AM: Was there a Morris in the middle, a Raleigh Morris? BS: No, Raleigh Morris lived behind us. AM: Okay, okay. So that would put the church somewhere around here. BS: Yeah, Raleigh Morris lived in behind us. UF: So the hotel consisted of large buildings— BS: Quite a few rooms. UF: A lot of rooms? BS: Mm-hm. And a huge dining room. UF: Was that in this main building? BS: You go in this main door here and this was what you’d call the receptions I guess. And then back here was the dining room and over in here was the kitchens. And these was all rooms up in here. UF: Okay. So the back side of it was the dining room and the left hand side facing the building would be the kitchen. And the upper rooms would be rooms that were rented out. And the cottages were behind it? BS: Yeah. UF: How nice. So it was pretty nice? BS: Three or four cottages back in here behind. Now Ms. Nelly Sims and her husband lived in one of them a good while after they were married. UF: Oh, so people would rent them for a long period of time? BS: Yeah. UF: Was that usual or did you usually get people just stopping in for the night? BS: No, they stopped in for the night mostly. They were the only ones I remember. AM: And your service station would have served all those people that were staying there. BS: Oh, yeah. UF: Do you have any idea how many— BS: Now before the Park took the land, my daddy had left Mr.—. Ed Mundy had the service station. Mr. Ed Mundy was running the service station. Do you have him on there? AM: No, I don’t have any Mundy. So your father bought the service station from him? BS: No, he bought the service station from my dad. AM: From your daddy. Was he related to the Marvin Mundy? BS: Yeah, it was his dad. Mr. Ed Mundy was Mr. Marvin Mundy’s dad. AM: Right. So then the Mundys were continuing to operate the hotel after you left and they took over the station, is that it? BS: No, his daddy took the station over. AM: Oh okay. I’m getting father and son mixed up. BS: Yeah, Mr. Ed Mundy was Mr. Marvin Mundy’s daddy and he started running the station. He was a older man. But they were still running the hotel when we left from there. UF: Do you remember when the hotel was built? BS: Mm-hm. UF: So it was built during when you were a little girl? BS: Yeah. UF: About when was that? AM: How old were you? (laughter) AM: We’re really asking hard questions. BS: I guess I was about ten years old maybe when that was built. UF: About ten years old. And you said you were born in 19— BS: Nineteen sixteen. UF: Sixteen. So that would be after there were cars coming through there? BS: Oh, yeah. UF: It was mostly car traffic and not buggies and wagons? BS: No, it was cars coming through there that I saw. AM: Was a lot of traffic coming through? BS: Yeah. Mm-hm. A lot of traffic coming through. UF: Was 33 a turnpike? Did people have to pay to go over 33? BS: No. I never knowed of anybody paying to go over. UF: Okay. I thought I had read that someplace. BS: Never that I remember. AM: What was your father’s name? BS: Ike Shifflett. UF: His real name was Isaac? Yeah. BS: But everybody knew him by Ike. AM: And it was your father that started the service station? BS: Oh yeah. He built that service station. AM: And I guess he did pretty good business. BS: Yeah, he did right good. UF: And before the service station, what did he do? BS: Just worked on the farm and he worked at University hospital some when they was building that. And then he did a lot of logging. UF: Now, how big was your farm? Did you have a garden and animals and all? BS: Oh, yes. Daddy had 108 acres up there. AM: What’d he raise? BS: Corn, potatoes, beans, and he planted some buckwheat. UF: Did you make buckwheat flour? BS: Yeah. We used to have buckwheat cakes for breakfast. UF and AM: Mmm. (laughter) BS: My mother would fix it up so that it would taste like sourdough bread and it was delicious. UF: What did you put on that? Did you have syrup or— BS: Yeah, we’d make homemade molasses. UF: Sorghum? Did you raise sorghum cane? Do you know or did you get that from the store? BS: We must have got that from the store because we didn’t raise that till after we moved off. We raised it at Barboursville I know. UF: Okay. You raised other vegetables too? BS: Oh, yes. Most any kind of vegetable that you would raise in a garden we raised. Cabbage and tomatoes. AM: You mentioned you had several cellars. BS: We had one cellar. And that’s where we would keep a lot of stuff in the winter. See it was back in the ground, just had the roof over it. And then Daddy would have what you call bins in there. And we just take apples and pour them in there. Take potatoes and put them on one side. And then we’d put pumpkins and beets on the floor and have them all the winter and onions. And then Daddy would bury his cabbage in the garden after he made sauerkraut. We used to make sauerkraut in the fall. Make about a sixty gallon barrel full of sauerkraut. And then he’d take and dig a trench in the garden and line that with leaves and straw and cabbage leaves, the lower cabbage leaves. Pull those cabbage up by the roots and set them down on their heads down on that stuff and then cover it with leaves and straw and cabbage leaves and throw dirt over it. UF: And they kept all winter that way? BS: All the winter long. And you could go there and get them out during the winter or during the spring of the year when you’d get ready to plow the garden, you’d have to pick them up. I believe they were sweeter then than they were when you put them in there. Just as soft. UF: So you’d save part of your cabbages as sauerkraut and part of them as cabbages. BS: As cabbages. UF: Uh-huh. Did you dry things too? BS: Oh, yeah. Dried apples and dried beans. UF: What about canning? BS: Canned a lot. UF: The way that you do today with— BS: Well, my mother used to can beans and they didn’t cold pack them. She would some of them, but she wouldn’t cold pack them like you do now. She’d open kettle cook them and put a tablespoon of vinegar in each half-gallon jar. And it would keep like that and I think it taste better. UF: Wow. So she just boiled it. And put boiling water with vinegar on it over the beans. BS: No, you’d boil the beans and water on the stove. Then you put them in the jar and you put the tablespoon of vinegar on it. UF: And then just put a regular— BS: Put the lids on it and that’d be it. UF: But it wasn’t sealed on? BS: Yeah, it would seal. UF: It was sealed? BS: It would seal, yeah. UF: Okay. Mmm, sounds good. BS: Yeah, it would seal. AM: What about animals? BS: Oh, we had those. We had horses and cows. AM: About how many? BS: Well, we milked six cows. AM: Gosh, you did have a lot of butter and milk. BS: We had more butter and milk than we could use. We milked six cows and Daddy always kept two nice horses, nice big horses. UF: What did you use the horses for? BS: Plow the fields. UF: Okay. BS: See you plowed it with horses then, not tractors like they do now. UF: Did you use them on a wagon too? BS: Yeah. AM: How about hogs? BS: We had lots of those too. (laughter) BS: Cause Daddy’d always kill about six at killing time. UF: Six? BS: Oh yeah. You’d have to, with eight children. Yeah, he’d kill about six every fall. UF: And how’d you keep that meat? BS: You’d salt it. See you’d never kill it till cold weather and then you would salt it. And then it would keep a long time, even after you taken the salt. Just like salt pork you get now at the store in there. We would salt it all. And then you’d can some of it and you’d make sausage and you’d make puddin’, liver puddin’. AM: How long would that meat from six hogs last? What, you killed them about November or December? BS: Daddy’d usually kill them right after Thanksgiving most of the time. It’d be the first of December. Cause he’d always like for it to be ice cold when he killed his hogs. AM: And how long would that meat last? BS: It would last us till next butchering time. AM: Six hogs. BS: Yeah, it would last you till you killed again. AM: Did you ever eat much beef at all? BS: We eat right much beef because my daddy and Mr. Herman unintelligible] from Elkton used to kill beef in the fall time. And sometimes they would kill a sheep. AM: Did your grandfather raise sheep too? BS: No, he didn’t raise sheep, but I had a few of them. AM: Like pets? BS: Like pets more or less, yeah. Like pets I’ll say. Now Ms. Elsie Baugher had sheep right across from us. UF: Did she use the wool or did you use the wool on your sheep? BS: We’d sell it; we’d sell it. Now that’s Mr. Raleigh Morris you see in there. He had a lot of sheep. And I used to help him shear his sheep so he would shear mine. AM: Didn’t you tell us a story about you had to sell your sheep or something happened? BS: Yeah. See they were pets and when Daddy’d go to feed the hogs, they’d butt him over in the trough like— (laughter) BS: So when we got ready to move he told me he said, “Sis if you don’t sell those sheep, if you’ll trade those sheep to Mr. Ruben Breeden for those hogs, for those hogs,” he said, “I’ll be glad cause I’m scared they’re gonna hurt me.” UF: (laughs) BS: So when we got ready to move from on the mountain I traded Mr. Ruben Breeden my sheep for I think it must have been about four shoats they called them, about half grown hogs. AM: I bet you missed them, huh? BS: Oh, I cried. Did I cry, but I didn’t let Daddy see me cause I knew it was worrying him. He hated to see me get rid of them too. UF: You had milk cows, and you had horses, and you had sheep, and you had hogs. BS: Yeah, and chickens. UF: And you had chickens? BS: And dogs, cats. UF: (laughs) AM: Something of everything. BS: Yeah. UF: A lot to take care of. Did all the kids help take care of all the animals and the garden? BS: Oh, yeah. See our garden we had it fixed so that chickens and things wouldn’t get in that you know. We had wire around it. Let the chickens just run loose around the chicken house and places. And the hogs of course Daddy had certain pens for those. He had a certain lot that we always called the hog lot cause hogs would root up your ground and cause rocks. And he had a certain field for those hogs. AM: He had a fenced in field? BS: Yeah. He had it fenced in. UF: And then another fenced in field for the cows? BS: He had all his land fenced in. But they would fence in certain places for certain things you know. UF: I see. AM: So he didn’t just let the hogs go loose? BS: No, they never went loose. UF: Did you have to feed the hogs or did they get fat— BS: We had to feed them. But see before killing the hogs, Daddy would put them in what you call a pen, a small place and feed them nothing but corn and pure water. But now during the summer you feed them what they call slop you know, the feed and stuff. But he would never feed his hogs, but six or eight weeks before we killed them, he’d never feed them anything but corn and water. That makes the meat hard and better or something. AM: Now how many children were in the family? BS: Eight of us. Four girls and four boys. UF: Now you said you had dogs. Were they used for hunting? BS: Sometimes. UF: Or were they pets? BS: They was both. But my brother liked to night hunt and he had night dogs to catch opossums and coons. That’s the only thing he’d catch you see. UF: Did you eat opossums and coons? BS: Yes we have. Towards the first you know, but when we got larger we wouldn’t eat it. UF: (laughs) BS: My brother used to catch them and put them in a cage and we’d feed them from the table. Keep them there a long time and fatten them up you know so we’d know what they’d been eating. UF: Yeah. They tasted better that way? BS: Oh yeah. Much better I guess. UF: What else did you hunt? BS: Rabbits, squirrels and that was it. UF: Did you ever see deer? BS: Never did. I never did see a deer up there. UF: Or bears? BS: No. UF: Were squirrels and rabbits right plentiful? BS: Yeah, they was right plentiful especially rabbits. AM: Did foxes ever get to the chickens? BS: Huh-uh. UF: Or the neighbors? Did you ever have complaints about that from the neighbors? BS: Nobody never bothered the chickens. No neighbors or anything. UF: And foxes never bothered anybody’s— BS: Hm-mm. UF: Did you ever see foxes? BS: I never did see no foxes. Wasn’t that many around I don’t guess. AM: Mrs. Lam was saying they had geese and turkeys over at her place. BS: Oh, yeah. UF: And ducks. BS: Yeah, they did. Cause their ducks used to come up and get in our spring. UF: (laughs) They were all domestic? BS: Yeah, they were close by and they loved water, you know. And they just follow the creek on up into the spring. UF: Was the Appalachian Trail there? BS: Not then it wasn’t. UF: The old road was there; the trail was there, but it wasn’t the Appalachian Trail. BS: No just the road. AM: Isn’t that map dated ’28? BS: That’s what I was looking at. (unfolding map) AM: Surveyed in 1927, ’28, and 1930. And it has Appalachian Trail through it. UF: Yeah, according to this— BS: (presumably talking to someone LS) It’s not working now? (LS responds, but unintelligible) UF: Oh. BS: Is that dated when? AM: It’s dated between’27 and ’30. Says Appalachian Trail right through here. BS: Now that would have went right through our yard. UF: That trail? BS: Yeah. AM: You would have known it was there. BS: Right up the spring path. It wasn’t there. AM: There wasn’t any trail there? BS: No! Huh-uh. That was right through Daddy’s land all the way up to the garden and everything. Right where we milked the cows. UF: Gee that’s funny. BS: Where that trails at now. UF: Huh, well maybe it’s been rerouted. Maybe that’s not exactly where it was then because this is where that old road was. Maybe that was their house. AM: Yeah, yeah it could be. UF: Cause that shows the trail as being farther over. You don’t remember there being an Appalachian Trail anywhere up there? BS: Huh-uh. UF: What about going up to the cemetery? BS: No, it wasn’t any there. That goes right through Mr. John Haney’s place. AM: You know something, look at this. It says here Appalachian Trail, but you don’t see any trail. All I see here is the county line. There’s a trail up here, but there’s no trail down here. Maybe they put down where it was gonna be or something when they made this map, but it wasn’t built yet. But there’s no trail runs down there at all. There’s the county line. The trail almost follows the county line. BS: Yeah, it wasn’t any trail there then. AM: I bet they were planning it, but they hadn’t put it in yet. BS: That’s what it was. UF: Yeah, I was wondering about that. BS: Now you know where the trail starts at the bottom going up there to the cemetery now? UF: Mm-hm. BS: Right at the bottom of 33. Now that was where Mr. John Haney’s house set, was right in there. UF: Right at the beginning of the, where the Appalachian Trail is now? AM: Where the Appalachian Trail crosses the Drive? BS: Yeah. UF: So it was right close to where 33 is now? BS: No, that would be the Drive. See when you cross over that. UF: Oh, okay. BS: See it would be the Drive going up to the cemetery, you know what I mean? UF: Right. BS: On the right. Well there was John Haney’s house set right in there. UF: Was there any signs out? I didn’t notice— BS: I didn’t see any sign at all. I looked. UF: Okay. AM: There was an awful lot of construction that went on right around there. BS: Oh, since this last it’s been worse since they put the double road through there. Now before when it was single road well you could tell a lot. But since it’s a double road just got you completely confused. Cause I used to could tell you where the church set because of the big stump. Well that’s gone now. The big stump was right at the edge of the church, right under the window almost. UF: Oh, my. Now this cemetery for the record was right off the Appalachian Trail, it’d be the first right off of it. And I did find it. And I saw it. BS: Yeah. Did you find the big tombstones over in there? UF: I sure did. BS: The Knightons? UF: Gee I don’t remember that name. I wrote down all the names that I could read and that wasn’t one of them that I could read. I saw your mother’s. Dessie? BS: Uh-huh. UF: And the baby. And William Sullivan. Now who was that? BS: That was my daddy’s uncle. UF: Okay. Now were those the only three within the fence? BS: Within our fence, yeah. UF: Yeah, okay. AM: Well the baby didn’t, what was the name on that? BS: It wasn’t named. UF: It just said “Baby.” BS: It was dead when it was born. UF: That’s sad. Your mother and her ninth child died in childbirth? BS: Childbirth. UF: And then I saw Elmar (??) Shiflett with one “F.” BS: Who? UF: Elmar. BS: Elmar, yeah. Uh-huh. UF: And Mary See Shiflett was right beside him. And Sarah M. BS: Dean. UF: Dean. Yeah. Oh, okay. It was “Sarah M. daughter of T.L. and J.A. Dean.” And then J.A. Dean was right there beside them. BS: And you didn’t get to the big ones? UF: I guess those were the only ones I found. There were a lot of little metal plates that didn’t have names on them anymore. BS: Yeah. Well now you know where our mother’s grave is at? UF: Uh-huh. BS: Right over in that left hand corner from hers is tombstones in there that tall. UF: My gosh. BS: Of Mr. Knighton. K-n-i-g-h-t-o-n. UF: Okay. I must not have gone back far enough. BS: Well, see it’s grown up in there so bad, but now when it dies down you can see all of those. UF: Now, who was Mr. Knighton? BS: Mr. Jack Knighton, he lived up there on out the Drive. About as far as Hensley Overlook down in the woods there. UF: Okay, do we have that on here? BS: Do you have Mr. Tom Dean? UF: Yeah. BS: All right. Look behind that, Mr. Jack Knighton— AM: It’s probably just off the edge. UF: Yeah, it might not go that far. Elmar and Mary, were they kin to you? BS: Hm-mm. No. Now that was, where I told you Uncle Pete Beasley he wasn’t any kin to us either, but I guess it was because he was an old man Daddy made us call him “Uncle” you know. And that was his sister I think, cause she stayed there and died there I think. UF: Now who would this be? It says J-a-h. Hat? AM: It looks like At. UM: At? A-t. They’re right behind John Haney’s land. AM: Now it is an “H,” ain’t it? J-a-h. BS: Behind Mr. John Haney’s land? UF: Mm-hm. AM: J-a-h. It coulda been more Haneys. BS: J.K. Haney. Where’s Mr. Alec Haney AM: Maybe that was— BS: That’s his. AM: J. Alec Haney. BS: Uh-huh. UF: Alec. Must be a Haney too. AM: Looks like he had a lot of land. BS: Yeah, he did. See now this was in between him and Mr. John Haney. See they was brothers. AM: Okay, now do you remember Mrs. Lam said the other school was on her uncle’s land or something? UF: That’s right. She referred to her uncle’s— AM: And the school teacher boarded with them, would that be the Big Ben School? I guess maybe she said the school teacher boarded with her uncle. BS: Yeah, that’s right. Now that was for the Big Ben School. But now the teacher that taught our school boarded with Mr. John Haney. UF: Okay, that makes sense. AM: Right, that’s what she said. Cause here it says Sunnydale School, but it was Sunnyside. BS: Sunnyside. AM: Yeah, they made a mistake here. Sunnyside School was in Rockingham and Big Ben School was in Greene County. BS: That’s right. UF: Okay. Your cemetery was on John Haney’s land? BS: Mm-hm. UF: And you could see the cemetery? BS: We could sit on our porch and see the cemetery. AM: Gosh, it’s grown up. BS: See we was in this— UF: I thought when I was up there looking across there, sure can’t do it today. BS: No you can’t. UF: (laughs) BS: But we could then. And this was, going up to that cemetery wasn’t anything but just grazing fields, just a green field where Mr. Haney kept his cows. UF: Was that fenced in too so that the cows couldn’t come into the cemetery? BS: Oh, yes. Cemetery was fenced in you see. Did you see some of the wire around that? UF: Mm-hm, I did. BS: That was fenced all in, the cemetery was. Down where you couldn’t see now, down the front of it on past where you saw those tombstones was the double gate where they used to go in at. See they’d come up the hill there. They’d carry most of them up there. Now if they went in a hearse or something they’d have to come around Mr. Alec Haney’s land, come around there. See it was a wagon road around there. But rather than coming around this way, they would just take them from the church up the hill to the cemetery. UF: Gosh. And somebody’d carry the casket all the way up there to the gravesite. BS: Mm-hm, cause it wasn’t that far you know at the time. AM: Then they didn’t call an undertaker to come up? BS: Oh yes. (whispers, presumably talking to LS) Go in that box and get that strap out. Just a string. (??) Yes indeed they had an undertaker; it was Mr. Ott Brill. AM: What’s that name? BS: Ott Brill, from— UF: Ott, O-t-t? BS: Ott Brill. Now his son— UF: How do you spell his last name? BS: B-r-i-double-l. From Elkton. His son Carl Brill still runs a funeral home there. UF: So you would call him up to the mountain? BS: Him or somebody. Mr. Miller, I forgot his first name, from Standardsville too. [tape break 00:46:12] UF: Did they do anything to prepare the body? BS: Oh yeah. They’d embalm them. UF: They did? AM: Now that’s what Mr. Wilberger was saying. He was saying they embalmed them up in the mountains. UF: I didn’t know that. BS: Mm-hm. See our mother died in Harrisonburg hospital and see Mr. Brill just went and got a [unintelligible] from his funeral home and fixed her up and then we had her brought home. UF: And that would have been in 1932? BS: Mm-hm. AM: You say they carried the body, they didn’t have a hearse? BS: They would have if you wanted it that way. They’d have a hearse. AM: Was it drawn by horses or did they have cars by then? BS: No, they’d have a motor. Now, I have the original of this, but I had these copies made. I had to [unintelligible] paper. UF: Oh, this is your about your mother. Oh my goodness. BS: That come out of the Elkton paper and I have the original. [tape break, 00:47:22] UF: Now [unintelligible] eight children, how did your father manage? BS: Well, see we was with our granddaddy and grandmother. UF: Yeah. AM: Let’s see, where did you come in in age? Were you one of the younger ones? BS: I’m the third one. I’m the oldest girl. AM: So some of the children were pretty young when your mother died? BS: My youngest sister was, she’d been four the following July. She was three in July; she died in November. And then my youngest brother, he was seven cause he was almost four years older than she was. UF: Oh my. AM: Did the children used to get sick up there? Did they have much trouble with sicknesses? BS: Not a bit hardly. Just once in a while maybe get a little cold or something not a very [unintelligibile]. AM: Just stayed pretty healthy up there? BS: Yeah. I think I would if I’d keep up the [unintelligible] (laughs) UF: (laughs) What would you do if you got a cold? Did you have any kind of medicine or would you— BS: Nothing but a little Vicks salve or something like that which I use yet today. AM: Did ya’ll have a doctor come up to the house? BS: Oh, yeah. We had doctors come up to the house. AM: From Standardsville or Elkton? BS: Elkton. Dr. McCulloch was his name. UF: McCulloch. Would you call him? BS: Mm-hm. UF: You had a telephone up there? BS: Oh yeah. Yeah the old timey telephones that ring. UF: Yeah. AM: You have one in the house? BS: No, we had one at the service station. Mr. Alec Haney and Mr. John Haney had a telephone in their house. AM: Yeah, yeah. She mentioned that too. I guess people would go over to their house or the service station and make a call. BS: Yeah, mm-hm. Call from there. AM: When were those telephones put in? Do you remember? BS: I don’t have any idea. UF: You’ve had telephone up there— BS: Ever since I can remember. Cause I know when I taken appendicitis they called the doctor from Mr. John Haney’s house. And him and his wife, she was a nurse, they both come brought me to University hospital. And he stayed with me till after I was operated on. AM: And you said your mother was taken to Harrisonburg hospital? BS: Yeah, but that’s after the baby was born. AM: Oh, I see. The baby was born at home. BS: The baby was born at home and she had two doctors with her. AM: Mm-hm. And then— BS: Then they took her to Harrisonburg. AM: Then they took her down. Were all the children born at home? BS: All of them except my youngest sister. She was born in University. UF: Would you have a midwife? BS: Uh-huh. UF: Or would you have a doctor? AM: You said you had a doctor for one. BS: No, a midwife. UF: Was there a midwife right there at Fern Hill? BS: There’s two of them, two of them. Mrs. Shifflett and a Ms. Morris. AM: Which Mrs. Shifflett? UF: Were they neighbors too? BS: No, they wasn’t really neighbors. Ms. Ella Morris. UF: Ella Morris? BS: Mm-hm. And I can’t think of Mrs. Shifflett’s name. UF: Did they come from very far away? BS: No, not very far. Just a little ways away. Now Ms. Morris lived over here in Greene County just down a little ways. And Mrs. Shifflett lived over the other way I think. UF: It’s not one of these Morrises? BS: No, that’s Mr. Tommy Morris and that’s Mr. Raleigh Morris. Let me see. UF: Well William? Is that W-m? Is that what that says? And then there’s another, the Sam Morris. BS: Mr. Sam Morris. No we’re going the wrong way. UF: Oh, it would be— BS: In Greene County down the other way because this is more or less going up towards Hightop. UF: Oh, okay. So it would be north of 33? BS: Uh-huh. UF: And a Morris that lived up there. AM: I didn’t get that section. UF: Okay. Was this Daniel Shifflett, was that a relative? BS: It was to Daddy, my granddaddy. He was a relative to my granddaddy. AM: I just saw something looking at these maps and I asked you about Shipp, S-h-i-p-p, and I read something about a Shipp cavern or something somewhere and I was getting it confused with the hotel. Do you remember anything like that? BS: Shipp? AM: Yeah. S-h-i-double-p. BS: Yeah that was over in Rockingham. AM: Yeah. BS: What was his name? AM: It doesn’t give first initials on here. BS: Yeah, I remember that Mr. Shipp, but he was, was it Shipp? AM: Did he run any kind of a tavern or anything? BS: Not that I know of he didn’t. AM: It could have been earlier too. BS: The Shipp I’m thinking about lives over there next to Elkton now. AM: Yeah this is [unintelligible]. BS: Uh-huh on the old road comes through that. AM: Yeah. It doesn’t give any first initial. You mentioned Mr. Smith, Quint Smith. You said they had dances over at his place. BS: After they moved. After they moved out the Park we’d go down and have dances at night, have square dances. AM: Was it just like an abandoned house there? BS: Yeah, it was. See he’d moved out, but they hadn’t torn anything down or nothing like that you see. A lot of people still lived up there. See a few families moved out early. Well we were one of them. AM: Is that because they knew the Park was coming? Is that why? BS: Well they done bought them out. See they done bought the places. UF: Early like in the ‘20s? BS: No. We moved, it was the last part of ’33 as far as I can remember. UF: There were some that moved out earlier than that? BS: Yeah, uh-huh. They took it over about when? I mean when did the government— UF: It was dedicated in ’36. The process started in ’26 I think. AM: Yeah, it took ten years to get all the land and people settled. BS: Well, now see some of them moved out earlier. Mr. Quint Smith was one of them that moved out early. And he was down there just a, we used to carry water from his well up there to our school. MA: The school was on his land? BS: Yeah. AM: What were the dances like? How many people would come? BS: Oh we had twenty-five or thirty. UF: And music? BS: Yes indeed. Guitar and banjo and fiddle. UF: Yeah. Now did your daddy allow you to dance? BS: Our granddaddy didn’t. UF: Your granddaddy didn’t? BS: No. And my old granddaddy was the boss. You know of our home because we called him Daddy. Called our daddy by his name. And he was the boss of our home. He didn’t allow that at home and we couldn’t do it at home you see. But we’d go down there and do it. But as long as we was with our older brothers it was okay. See I had two older brothers, older than I was. And if we went with them it was fine. UF: They acted as chaperones. (laughs) BS: So that’s the way we’d go down and have the dances. We’d tell everybody you know, let’s go have a dance down there. And we’d all come. UF: Where did the musicians come from? Were they neighbors? BS: Yeah, they would be neighbors and friends. [audio volume dims significantly] And we’d [unintelligible] UF: Did you ever have any instruments in your own home? BS: Nothin’ but a Victrola. UF: Oh, you had a crank phonograph? BS: Mm-hm. AM: What’d your granddady say about that? BS: Well, he didn’t care. AM: As long as you didn’t dance to it, huh? BS: You didn’t dance to it. UF: (laughs) BS: No, he wasn’t interested in no dancing or playing cards anything like that except rook. We could play rook. Cause that had numbers on it you know. UF: He was pretty strict? BS: Oh, he was strict. UF: Mrs. Lam mentioned the same thing. BS: Well they were, all the old people were. AM: They didn’t allow dancing or anything. What about drinking? BS: No. UF: No drinking at all? BS: Now my daddy, he would drink and boy he wouldn’t do anything about that because he would come home you know and he drank some, but nobody else. UF: Now you told us before that you made homemade beer. BS: Yeah. UF: But that you had to do it on the fly. BS: We had to do it on the sly; we couldn’t let Daddy know it. Out mother knew it of course; we’d tell her. We wouldn’t do anything we didn’t tell her. She didn’t mind. UF: Tell us how you made that again. BS: We would take a ten gallon crock they called it. I got one in the basement now, but it’s not for beer. (laughs) And we’d put five gallons of water, five pounds of sugar, and a can of malt, Red Top malt. And then if we could get it, we’d get a box of raisins and put in it. That would really make it good then. And then we’d set it up and let it sit there, oh about eight days I believe, something like that anyway till it was ready. Then we’d bottle it, put it in bottles. And if you’d get Coca-Cola bottles or any kind of bottles like that, you know we’d save them. And that’s what we’d use for that beer. (laughs) And we had it up in the top of the old cellar. Our mother put the ladder up there for us to climb up in. Then she’d take the ladder down scared Daddy would be coming in from the field or someplace, you know, so he wouldn’t know we was up there. UF: And he never caught you? BS: No, he never caught us. Now of course he wouldn’t go in the cellar that often you know. He’d send the children or somebody. If he had, he’d a smelled it. (laughs) AM: Did you just drink it yourselves? BS: We would drink at the neighbors. Yes, that’s all we young people would drink. You know just take a bottle or two. UF: Would you take that down to the dances? BS: No. UF: No? BS: Hm-mm, couldn’t take it to the dances. We’d just drink around there you know. No, we couldn’t take it to the dances. AM: Was anybody around there making moonshine? BS: If it was, I don’t know. But now over in Greene County they did. But now up there I don’t know of anybody. Now they said back on Hightop they made and back down in Greene County, but not on the Blue Ridge Mountains. You know, right up there. We always call it Blue Ridge Mountains. UF: Did you know of people in Hightop too or was that too far away? BS: No, we knew them. They used to come over to the church. People’d come from there to the church, sure. UF: My goodness. AM: They had another school over there didn’t they? Hightop School? BS: Yeah. AM: So it was quite a few schools around there. How many children would be in the school you went to, Sunnyside? BS: Well, now we’d go from the first through the seventh grade. And it’d be eight and ten in each class, each grade. UF: And all in one room. BS: All in one room. And one teacher. UF: My gracious that means over fifty people. BS: At least that. AM: I had no idea it was that many. BS: Yes it was too. UF: Sounds like it’d be pretty confusing all those kids in different classes— BS: That depended on your teacher. UF: Oh, she keep things pretty strict? BS: Ms. Sylvie Meadows was our teacher. UF: Sylva Meadows? BS: Sylvie Meadows. AM: Is she from Elkton. BS: She’s from Standardsville. And she didn’t have any trouble. AM: She must have been good. UF: (laughs) BS: Well see then you was allowed to whip a child. And she had one girl that was spoiled rotten. It was Annie Williams was her name, Mr. Willie Williams’ daughter. And she was really spoiled. And she thought she could do anything. So Ms. Sylvie told her to come up and get on the front bench, sit on the front bench. So she would try not to be mad when she’d whip one of them. She would try to settle down. Anyway she went to the blackboard and she did some writing on the blackboard. So finally she come back and got Annie by the hand right in front of the whole class, that’s something she didn’t do, and took that switch to her. She didn’t have any more trouble. She whipped my brother three times in one day. AM: Oh my goodness. What was he doing? BS: He was just mischievous. And then she’d sit there and cry. She wouldn’t let him see it, but we’ve seen her cry. She thought it wasn’t anything right. But he was so mischievous. He’d get the children to laughing in there and they couldn’t stop and stuff like that you know. And then you couldn’t do things like that. You had to be quiet in class. UF: I can see with that many kids all studying different things. What was the most important thing that you learned at school? What did they stress? BS: It was arithmetic and geography, history, spelling. Arithmetic, geography, history, spelling. And lockey (??) writing. Did you ever see the old lockey books? UF: No. Lockey? BS: Mm-hm. We each one had one every year. And you’d have to hold your hand a certain way and go around. And then you’d have the numbers to go by that you’d have to practice to and it was perfect. AM: Was the attendance real good at school? BS: Yeah. AM: How long did that run? What month to what month? BS: Run nine months. It was nine months. AM: Same time period as it is now. UF: And be off in the summertime? BS: Mm-hm. AM: Did you walk to school right? Wasn’t very far. BS: Yeah, we walked. It was about two miles. AM: Did you have trouble getting there in the winter? BS: No, we didn’t have any trouble. We had things to wear that you could just go right on to school. UF: And you never stayed home because it got too cold or was snowing? BS: No. Not if the school was open. Now if the snow got too deep sometimes the school would be closed just like it is now. AM: How’d you find out? BS: Huh? AM: How’d you find out? BS: Just everybody there on the mountain would know. The snow was too deep. AM: You knew what the too deep was. BS: Yeah. AM: Well, what was the winter like up there? Is it different from the way it is now? Were the winters more severe? BS: It was then up there to what it is here now, but I didn’t realize it at the time. You wouldn’t realize it, but I know it was. Cause, you know, now you don’t have those snows. Cause we used to sleigh ride up there at the top of Daddy’s place, you know, at this Mr. Davis’ place, where is that? Right here. Now you see, I can’t find Daddy’s place now. Right here. Let me turn this around. We had a fence in here between Daddy and Mr. Davis. And see this is the road that a lot of children walked to school, coming back here at Mr. Jerry Beasley’s and all those places to come to school. Now they had a long ways to walk. The snow used to get over this rail fence. And we used to go up there and sleigh ride and come over the fence and never know you come over the fence. UF: Now, the fence probably stood what, four feet high or something? BS: Well it’d have to be at least that because you had [audio volume normalizes] what, about eight or ten rail fence. UF: Four foot snow?!? My gracious. BS: Yeah. We used to get on the sleigh and come right on down over top of the fence and you wouldn’t know there was no fence there. AM: Gee, that was a lot of snow. BS: And you know when they started that Skyline Drive up there, you know the turn right now that would go around up to the cemetery? UF: Uh-huh. BS: We used to sleigh ride. Our brothers and the boys on the mountain would make sleighs. We didn’t have sleighs like they buy now. They’d made sleighs. UF: Out of what? BS: Pieces of boards. And then little runners, they’d have to make their runners like a slide would have. UF: Out of wood too? BS: Yeah, out of wood. And then they would put one piece in front. They’d add a tongue they called it onto the sleigh. And then have this other piece in front with a cross across it that they would guide the sleigh by. And we used to get on that first turn on that drive, that’s where it was open you see, on that first turn on that drive, come all the way down that drive and around into Mr. John Haney’s store, sleigh riding. And we’d be about four and five on that sleigh because we would lay down, one on top of the other. UF and AM: (laughs) AM: Oh, goodness. BS: We’d have more fun. AM: Did you all fall over at once? (laughs) BS: My brother, older than me, run us into a snow drift (phone ringing) and just cut us up with that ice, you know. UF: Do you remember when the Drive was built? BS: Oh, yeah. Sure. UF: What was your reaction to Skyline Drive? BS: (laughs) I guess we just wondered how they was gonna get it in there. I don’t know. AM: Let me ask you one more thing about the snow. If the snow was that deep, I mean that would cover up everything in the graveyard, right? BS: Mm-hm. AM: How did they bury people in the winter? BS: Well, see it wouldn’t be snow that deep every place. It would drift a lot of places. AM: Oh, I see. BS: See the wind would blow and it would drift. But they would do it. I mean everybody, all the neighbors and things would get together get the snow out the way. They would do it. AM: They all had to work together on things like that. BS: Yeah, they would. UF: Do you ever remember winter being a hardship? BS: No. UF: [unintelligible] You never ran out of food? BS: No. UF: Never able to not get water because it was frozen. BS: Hm-mm, never. We used to make snow cream. UF: What’s snow cream? BS: It’s like ice cream except we use snow to make snow cream. UF: You pour milk into the snow? BS: You’d take, well if you had peaches or flavor of any kind and sugar and then we’d make snow cream. Take the snow and fix it. You know people used to get it together today. And then we would make ice cream. UF: How’d you do that? BS: We’d put our cream and whatever we was gonna make it out of in a bucket. It would be maybe a gallon bucket. And then we’d set it in a larger kettle and put ice and snow around that and add some salt to it and just turn that and let it freeze just like that. Freeze and make ice cream. AM: You mostly did that in the winter? You said you put snow around it. BS: Yeah. UF: So snow cream was the same way only you put snow around the kettle or in the kettle around the bucket. BS: When we’d make snow cream, we’d just use the snow. But our mother never would let us use the first snow cause she said that might be dirty. Not the first snow, you’d have to wait till it snowed a while. UF: Well the snow never touched the cream did it? BS: No, huh-uh. But still she wouldn’t let us you know use first snow. They’d say may be dirty, you’d have to wait. UF: Oh, okay. AM: What about church? How many people would come to church? Is that every Sunday you’d have service? BS: Uh-huh, every Sunday. AM: About how many people would come? BS: Practically everybody around. And I just don’t have no idea how many it was. Everybody come to church. AM: Who was the preacher? BS: Brother Henry Knight was a Brethren preacher. And he would be preaching, I don’t remember what his name was. UF: Henry Knight was the Brethren preacher? BS: Uh-huh. AM: Did they preach together? BS: No, one preach one Sunday and one the next. AM: I see. UF: And you’d be as United Brethren? BS: Yeah, United Brethren. AM: Did they come from Standardsville? BS: Brother Henry Knight come from, no I would say Lydia. That’s above Standardsville. UF: And they came up every Sunday and then went back home again? BS: Uh-huh. AM: What was Mrs. Lam talking about some student who was a preacher? UF: That was the first one at the church. AM: That was probably earlier. Yeah. UF: Carl Hisey, Hiser. BS: Hiser. UF: You remember him? BS: Yeah, but now I just remember maybe I remember him from his picture, probably. Cause I don’t remember him preaching, but I know he was. But I think it must have been from the picture cause I don’t remember. AM: Yeah, that was earlier. UF: When you remember it, did they drive up or did they have a buggy or a horse? BS: They would walk, ride horses, and drive. Some would drive and a lot of them would drive and ride horses. UF: My goodness. If they walked they’d have to start up pretty early in the morning. BS: Yeah. Now all these Mr. Morrises and things back here, all his children come to church. And he had quite a few of them. And Mr. Raleigh Morris didn’t have any children. AM: Did they have Sunday school? BS: Yeah, we had Sunday school and then preaching. And had preaching on Sunday nights. UF: Two services in the day? BS: Mm-hm. And then we’d have Bible school in the summer. Missionaries, different ones would come, and we’d hold Bible school a couple weeks. UF: Every day for two weeks? BS: Uh-huh. From nine to twelve during the day. Then they’d have revival, you know. They’d have church at night then. UF: And you had an organ at church? BS: Mm-hm. Yeah, we had an organ. I don’t know whatever become of that organ. I don’t have any idea. AM: How long did you spend in church on Sunday morning? BS: You’d spend from about ten to twelve cause you’d go to Sunday school an hour and then have church an hour. AM: Right, right. What about holidays? Did you celebrate Christmas and so on? BS: Yeah, we’d celebrate Christmas. It’s different than what it is now because they use Halloween as we use Christmas up there. UF: Huh. You went something like trick-or-treating at Christmastime? BS: Yeah. UF: How did that work? BS: Fine with us cause we enjoyed it. UF: (laughs) BS: Now, we wouldn’t go trick-or-treating. Now, we wouldn’t ask for anything. But we would dress up in all kinds of costumes. And quite a few of us would get together, the young people, and we’d go to different people’s houses. And they’d invite us in and then they’d have to guess who we were. UF: (laughs) BS: And snow would be on the ground, you know and we would just have a lot of fun, we really would. And we’d do that for the week of Christmas. UF: And every day you’d go to a different person’s house? BS: Every night. At nights, we’d go at nights. AM: What kinds of costumes did you, do you remember any of your costumes? BS: Yeah, you could buy them. UF: Oh, my. AM: At Haney’s store or down in town? BS: No, down in town. AM: In Elkton? BS: Uh-huh. I don’t think Mr. John Haney ever had any cause he didn’t like it, you see. UF: (laughs) AM: What about your granddaddy? He thought that was okay? BS: No. AM: Oh, he didn’t like that either. BS: He didn’t like that either. And we’d have to hide our costumes, you know, from him. And we’d hide it in the garage and he’d never go in there and look. I think maybe he’d seen it, but he never would say anything. (laughs) AM: Didn’t he wonder where you were at night when you were— (laughs) BS: (laughs) No our mother would know, you see. She would know. UF: Was it kinda like the things that kids wear today? BS: Yeah. It was in a way, but it was more like Christmas, like Santa Claus suits. Now some of them would really have Santa Claus suits. And you could buy faces with white beard on them and different stuff. AM: My goodness. UF: What were they made out of, the masks? BS: Something like the same thing that the Halloween costumes are made of. UF: I think they’re plastic now. Lee Shifflett: Yeah, they’re plastic now. BS: Well, it must have been paper then or something; I don’t think it was plastic. Or cloth. UF: Well, that’s really interesting. I’ve never heard of that either. BS: And then we would paint ourselves up too a lot. If you didn’t have a face, you’d paint yourself on up. AM: That must have been something. BS: I remember one time we was coming down a hill right there above Mr. Lester Meadows’ store. AM: That’s in Elkton, right? BS: No, it’s right at the bottom of the hill of Swift— AM: The bottom, where the Park is? BS: Where the Park is. It’s in the Park now, but it wasn’t then. We was coming down that hill there and it was snow and ice on the ground and one of the girls had a long dress on. And someone stepped on that dress. She fell out; I imagine it was about a dozen of us fell on top of her. (laughs) UF: (laughs) BS: See coming down the hill, you couldn’t stop. AM: You must have been running or something. (laughs) BS: It was slick and right straight down the hill. UF: Did you have a Christmas tree? Was that something you usually had? BS: Yes, but you’d have to make your own decorations to go on it most of the time. UF: Yeah, you’d go out into the woods and find a tree? BS: Yeah. UF: Bring it into the house? BS: Uh-huh. AM: Did you make mostly paper decorations? BS: Yeah. Popcorn. You’d make chain lengths out of paper, you know. And we’d use flour for glue together. You could take flour and water, you know, and add it together and make a paste. AM: Paste, yeah. So it sounds like you spent a lot of time with Christmas festivities. BS: Oh, we did. We enjoyed Christmas. We really did. UF: Did you have a big dinner, a special dinner? BS: Oh yeah, we’d always have a special dinner on Christmas. UF: And would there be special church services too? BS: I don’t think maybe we’d have special church services. No, I don’t believe so. UF: Did you sing Christmas carols? BS: Oh yes, they’d sing Christmas carols. At the church, yeah they would do that. But we wouldn’t have nothing special going on. UF: Did you usually exchange gifts? BS: No. Now the school would sometimes. See the teacher would ask the children if they wanted to and if everybody agreed that they could and would, that’d be fine. AM: Did you draw names for that? BS: Yeah, put them in a hat and draw names. UF: And then what would you give— BS: Oh, we’d have a big play at Christmas at school. AM: The whole community came to it? BS: Yeah, at night. We’d play one at night. AM: Was it like a Christmas pageant? BS: It was. And everybody would come. UF: If you did exchange gifts, what kinds of things would they do? Would you make gifts or buy things? BS: We would usually buy something then. She would set a certain price and don’t go over that price, nobody, so nobody would feel bad. Sometimes you’d give them paper or pencils or different things, you know, just to wrap to have under the tree. UF: That’s neat. Any other holidays that you celebrated? BS: No, not any that I can think of that we’d have as much fun. (laughs) UF: Thanksgiving? Easter? BS: Now, of course you’d try to get a new outfit for Easter. UF: Oh, did you? BS: Oh, yeah. Sure. AM: Store bought? BS: Yeah. AM: From Elkton maybe? BS: From Elkton or Harrisonburg. They’d go to Harrisonburg sometimes. UF: Gosh. How often did you go all the way into town? BS: Almost any time. I mean my brothers used to go down there a lot. That’s where they’d— UF: To Elkton? BS: Yeah. UF: Now, was that after you had a car or before? BS: That’s after we had a car. UF: You were one of the first people on the mountain to have a car? BS: I think my daddy must have been. Him and Mr. Jerry Haney, that’s Mr. Alec Haney’s son. I think they must, and Jim Haney, that was Mr. John Haney’s son. AM: John Haney’s still living isn’t he? BS: Oh, yeah. AM: Yeah, he lives in Elkton. BS: He lives up there next to— AM: Somebody we might should get in touch with. [tape break, 01:18:17] UF: How old were you when you got your car? BS: When my daddy got the car? UF: When your daddy got the car. Do you remember? BS: Hm-mm. Don’t have any idea what the first car was. UF: Were you real young? BS: Yeah, I must have been awful young when he got the first car. UF: So you had a car almost your whole life? BS: As far as I know. Yeah, as far as I know he did. Cause I know him and Mr. Jim Haney were talking about bought a 1929 brand new, Chevrolets. UF: Wow. But that wasn’t his first one? BS: No. UF: He had one before that? BS: Oh, he had cars before that. AM: Now there’s a picture of a Lam’s Mill in here, that was near there wasn’t it? BS: A what? UF and AM: Lam’s Mill. UF: Grist Mill. BS: Oh, that’s on this side, yeah. Yeah, that’s Mr. Walter Lam’s Mill. UF: Walter Lam? Mm-hm. BS: Oh, that’s it. UF: Now you took what, corn? BS: Take corn and— UF: Buckwheat too? BS: Yeah. And see then Daddy would, when he’d take corn down there he’d take a lot of corn and trade it for meal and flour. See he didn’t raise no wheat. UF: Wouldn’t it grow up on the mountain? BS: Maybe so, I don’t know, but he never did try. UF: You just raised corn and buckwheat and then you’d pay with corn and buckwheat. BS: Yeah. Yeah. UF: You never paid cash? BS: Oh, sometimes if you had cash, but see my daddy worked in the woods and get money. Stuff like that. UF: And if you didn’t have cash, you’d simply— BS: Mm-hm. Pay with corn. And people was glad to get it because a lot of people that had money and didn’t raise that stuff would come and buy it. See they would buy meal and flour. UF: Didn’t most of the people on the mountain have a garden and raise— BS: Oh, yes. AM: Did he serve people who were not on the mountain as well? BS: Mm-hm. He served Standardsville and different places. And then you know it was a mill out there next to Wolftown. And people would go out there. It’s still the old wheel is out there. UF: I think I’ve seen that. BS: Yeah. Out next to Wolftown. UF: So people like from town would come up? BS: Uh-huh. UF: And buy meal then from Mr. Lam? BS: Yeah. That place was a busy place. AM: These pictures are in the [unintelligible]. People listening to the tape. And now were there other types of mills there too? Like a stave mill? BS: Not there. Stave mill’s on top of the Blue Ridge Mountains. AM: It’s right at Fern Hill? BS: Yeah. UF: Would that have been far from your house? BS: No, just a little ways. See where Ms. Elsie Baugher’s land’s at here? Where is that? UF: Elsie (pronounces it Ellis) Baugher’s land right here. BS: Right here. There’s Daddy’s and Ms. Elsie’s. Who’s this? Quint Smith? UF: Smith, yeah. BS: No, it wasn’t down that far. It was right in here next to Ms. Elsie’s land, right along in here. UF: Was there a road that went to there? BS: Yeah, oh is this the old road? UF: This would be 33, right? AM: Yeah. UF: And this would be another smaller— BS: All right, yeah. Now this is Ms. Elsie’s. The stave mill was right along here on the old 33. Thirty-three would bring you right by it. UF: Okay, right in here someplace. AM: Did all the men work there? BS: He had lots of men work there. Daddy worked there with his mule. [audio volume dims] UF: He had two horses plus a mule? BS: Oh, yes. But he raised that mule from a little colt, yeah because she died. She was thirty-three years old when she died, thirty-four. AM: What kind of wood did they make staves out of? BS: I don’t have any idea. UF: And they get the wood right up there on the mountain— BS: Uh-huh and bring it in there. UF: And the staves are used for? BS: To make barrels. UF: To make barrels, okay. BS: You know I can see that now, how they cut those staves. And I know I was small. I had to be. But I can see them cutting those staves. AM: Was it a special way they had to do it? BS: Yeah. They had some kind of thing they had to mash their foot down on and push it down. UF: Yeah? So it didn’t operate very long? BS: I don’t know how long it had been there. I just remember it, you know, it was there when I can remember it. And then stayed there, I know we was going to school, it was right good size. UF: And then you remember it closing down? BS: Yeah, I remember it setting still. No I don’t know whatever happened to it. I think they must have come and got the machinery from Elkton or whoever owned it or whoever did it. I don’t know. UF: So it might have just [unintelligible]. BS: Something like that. All the wood through up there probably. UF: Yeah. BS: Moved it someplace else probably. AM: Yeah. So it probably moved around. UF: So it might have ended when? Were you still going to school when it stopped? BS: Yeah, we were going to school cause we used to stop by there and play with some of that stuff. UF: After it had closed? BS: Mm-hm. UF: What were you then? Do you remember how old you might have been? BS: I don’t remember. I don’t have any idea. AM: Well you had to be less than, if you went till seventh grade you had to be less than twelve or thirteen. Was there a sawmill too? BS: Yeah. My daddy, you know, they had the sawmill on this side, in Greene County. UF: So it would be down in here someplace? BS: Yeah, mm-hm. UF: Was it far from your house? BS: No, it wasn’t far. We’d just walk right down through, had a path. AM: Was it a lot of Haney’s land? BS: Huh-uh. AM: I haven’t got that section Xeroxed. BS: No. No, that wasn’t on Haney’s; that was on Daddy’s father. UF: Down this way? BS: Mm-hm. UF: More than like a mile from your land? BS: Oh, yeah. Like straight down through there. Now let’s see, who did own that land? I don’t have no idea who owned it, but I know they just bought the wood, you know, and set the sawmill up. So I don’t know who owned the land, who they bought it from. UF: Do you remember that one starting? BS: Oh, yeah. I remember the sawmill. We used to carry lunch down there to them when they was working. My mother would cook and pack lunch at home; we’d carry it to them to eat. UF: Oh. What, did they pay you for doing that? BS: Well it was my daddy and brothers. UF: Oh, I see. To your— BS: Yeah. UF: And did that operate until you left or closed down before? BS: No, huh-uh. It closed down before. UF: Very long before? BS: A few years. AM: Was that moved somewhere else too? BS: Yeah. AM: So they were kind of portable operations? BS: Yeah. They’d move, you know, from woods to woods. When they get through one section, they move someplace else. UF: And they had a motor too? BS: Oh, yeah. UF: But the grist mill was water powered. BS: That was water powered by water. AM: What about a tannery? Did you use the one in Elkton? BS: The one in Elkton. AM: Did people peel bark and take it down there? BS: Mm-hm. AM: What kind of bark? Do you know that? UF: What kind of trees? BS: I don’t have any idea. UF: And your daddy did that too? BS: My granddaddy did. AM: How did he do it? BS: On a wagon. He hauled it on a wagon. AM: How did he peel it? BS: With some kind of a broad ax or something he’d peel the bark. And then they would haul the wood off to extract wood. What would that be? UF: I think that might be what they call the tanbark. BS: Yeah, the tanbark, but then they’d haul the wood too. What would the wood be for? Posts— AM: Some wood I guess would have it. UF: I don’t know, I heard— AM: [unintelligible] UF: Well— AM: Wouldn’t it? UF: Chestnut wood, it has. That’s why it preserves so long in the fall. BS: May be because I know, yeah. They would peel the bark, but then they would haul the wood too. Round posts like that. AM: To the tannery? BS: Yeah, they’d haul it down to Elkton. AM: That’s the first I’ve heard of that. It’d make sense though if they could get it out of the woods some way. UF: Well, Mrs. Lam mentioned extract wood and I figured that was just another name for tanbark. BS: Huh-uh. It’s wood. It’s round posts, round wood like this, you know. UF: What maybe ten inches in diameter? BS: Something like that. I can see they’d have it on the wagons. Well I’ve seen Daddy do it, but I don’t know what that was for then. He’d haul it off to Elkton. UF: And that was in a wagon? BS: Mm-hm. UF: So you used a wagon and horses for some things? BS: Oh, yeah. Lots of things. UF: And you used a car for other things? AM: The car was mostly for you just getting around it wasn’t for hauling? BS: It wasn’t for hauling or it wasn’t for to make a living. UF: Now if that road was [unintelligible] in dirt, how could a car get up and down? It didn’t ever get stuck? BS: I never did see one stuck. UF: Is that right? Just bumpy? AM: Must have had good drainage on the road. What about tires? Did you go through a lot of tires? BS: Not if you had solid rubber tires, you wouldn’t. You know I remember some solid rubber tires on cars. AM: Did your father work on cars at all or just put gas in them? BS: No, he didn’t work on them. UF: How often would you go as far as Harrisonburg? That’s a long way. BS: It’s about twenty-six miles from the top of the mountain. UF: Yeah, I guess. Would you go there just for special things? BS: Yeah, just for special things or special things Daddy had to do, you know. Pay taxes and different things like that, you know. UF: Yeah. As often as once a month or every few months? BS: Every few months I think. I don’t think he’d go as much as once a month. UF: And you might go to Elkton several times a week? BS: Oh, yeah. UF: When you wanted to get something at the store, you usually went to Meadows’ store? BS: We could go to Mr. John Haney’s store or we could go down to Mr. Lester Meadows’ store. UF: Okay. So if you could get it at Haney’s store, you went there and if you couldn’t get it there then you’d go down to Meadows’ store. AM: Meadows had a little bigger store? BS: Yeah. AM: Would Mr. Haney get some of his stock from Mr. Meadows? Or mostly just what people brought in? BS: I don’t have no idea if he would or not. Well now see when we had butter, stuff like that to sell, we’d take it to Mr. Lester Meadows cause I don’t think Mr. John Haney’d take that. I don’t think he had no way of keeping it or something. AM: How did Mr. Meadows keep it? BS: He had some kind of a freezer you walked in or something. Some kind of an ice box. UF: Oh, really? Well you never had one of those in your home though? BS: No. AM: I don’t guess anybody did then. BS: No. We didn’t need any then. We really didn’t. UF: What about clothing? You said that you always got a special Easter outfit and that usually store bought. Was most of your clothes store bought? BS: No. Yeah, most of them were, was store bought. And a lot of them was made. UF: Your mother made clothes for you? BS: Yes, and the neighbors would sew and we would sew, different ones. UF: Did you learn how to sew when you were a little girl? BS: Not too much. I learned later though, but not too much at that time. UF: Did you have a treadle sewing machine? BS: Uh-huh. UF: And you mentioned before that your grandmother spun. BS: Yeah. UF: And knit. BS: Uh-huh. UF: Wool. BS: She did. UF: But your mother didn’t? BS: No. My mother didn’t. AM: Was that the wool from your sheep or that was before that? BS: No, that was before that. I don’t even remember, I remember her knitting. I never have seen her card. UF: Carding? BS: Card, is that what you call it? UF: Yeah. Did any of the other women very often spin their own wool and knit? BS: I don’t have any idea whether they did or not. I never did see any though. Maybe they may have, but I didn’t see. UF: What about shoes? BS: Oh, we bought our shoes. Yeah. UF: You bought your shoes all right? BS: Uh-huh. UF: Did you wear shoes all year long? BS: Oh, yeah, if they could keep them on us. We like to go barefoot in the summer, but you had shoes to wear. Which I still go barefoot. (laughs) My husband too. But I love to go barefoot. UF: I don’t know how you can stand walking on all those rocks all the time. BS: Oh, I love it; I still love it. UF: And the [unintelligible]. (laughs) BS: Up there we didn’t have, you wouldn’t have any idea of the, it’s nothing like it was. Now Daddy had rock walls. You go up that trail, you see some of them rock walls now. AM: Why did he make those? BS: To get the rocks off the land and that’d make a fence. UF: And they carried them by hand, picking up the rocks— BS: Picking up the rocks and putting them on that rock wall. AM: That’s the thing I can’t imagine. There’s so many rocks up there and I can’t imagine the people going through all that work to piling up those rocks. BS: Yeah, you did. AM: That amazes me more than anything else. BS: But now you see a lot of rocks on the land where you didn’t see then. Which I reckon the water washes them off. Well it’s just like my garden out here I think. When it rains, look like it rains rocks. But I guess that’s the way it was then cause we wasn’t bothered by them rocks. We didn’t have no rocks in our garden. UF: Is that right? BS: Hm-mm. AM: Well did he have to go out and pile them up every year? I mean did the soil wash off— BS: No, not that much. When he didn’t have any work to do, like in the winter when it wasn’t bad, “Come on children, let’s go pick up some rocks.” UF: So all eight of you’d go out there? BS: All of us go; we’d pick up rocks. And we’d picking it, you know or anything like that. UF: You didn’t have to clear rocks out of your garden? [tape break, 01:33:17] AM: Now that is kind of a mystery. [audio normalizes] BS: It really is. That’s what I’m telling you, cant’ understand it. AM: Cause they’re putting in these [unintelligible] lines now at Loft Mountain and you can see the ground looks like solid rock. And I just can’t imagine people farming that. BS: It’s just washed off or something. I don’t know what. UF: So the soil was mostly covered by grass? BS: Grass and dirt. And up in the garden, we had two gardens, you know, what they say gardens, but then we had fields. But up in the other garden, right in the bottom of it Daddy had this tall grass that would come up there, strip of it. I see it now up there. UF: You did? BS: Just kind of surround it. And he would cut that two and three times a year. UF: Make hay out of it and save that for feed for the cows? BS: Feed for the cows. He sure would. UF: So you could run barefoot in those fields and not hurt your feet? BS: And not think anything about it. UF: (laughs) As soon as you started going to school you always wore shoes? BS: Oh, yes. We’d wear shoes anyway, but we’d have to wear shoes to school. They just let us go barefoot when it was warm weather if we wanted to. AM: Did they ever burn those fields? BS: Hm-mm. AM: To clear them? I guess they was already cleared. BS: They was already cleared. And the cows and things kept it cleared in the [unintelligible] by eating and grazing and doing. UF: Did your granddaddy have to clear it when he moved there? Maybe you don’t know. BS: I don’t know. I don’t know; he may have. AM: I guess when they were cutting for the sawmills and everything, a lot of it got cleared. BS: Sure it was and the stave mill. Had to be. UF: Did you have any flowers? BS: Yeah. UF: Did you plant flowers at your big house? BS: Mm-hm. UF: Do you remember what kind they were? BS: Yes, indeedy. We had two of the prettiest rose bushes out there in front of the house. UF: Are they still there? BS: One of them had gone wild, look like a wild rose with the little yellow spot in it, you know, there like that. I saw it—. And then my grandmother liked flocks and she had the tall ones. On down the roadside there we had flowers all down there in the cross in front of the house. UF: Did you breed (??) day lilies? BS: Now what’s day lilies? What would you call them? UF: Well, gosh. AM: Big orange— UF: It looks sort of like a [unintelligible] only it’s orange and has an opening about that big. BS: I don’t remember whether we did or not, but I know those little yellow flowers like that that you see a lot of them up there of now, a lot of people had those. You see the yellow flower with the little— AM: Sunflower? BS: Is that what you call it? UF: Has a lot of petals? BS: Yeah, but they’re not too big. About like this with the little sun up, a lot of yellow flowers. UF: Something that looks, you know, it has a lot of little— LS: A daisy? BS: Yeah, that’s it. Something like that. UF: Yeah, okay. BS: People had a lot of those around up there. UF: Did you ever use any of the things that were living in the forest? [tape break, 01:36:29] BS: Then we used to have someone come around and sell Rawley (??) stuff. UF: Sell what? BS: Rawley was the name of it. UF: Rawley? BS: Yeah. AM: This was a peddler? BS: Yeah. And they used to have different kinds of flavoring and pie filling and liniments and stuff like that that people would buy. AM: About how often did they come up? BS: Well, when they think you’d be run out, they’d come back again, maybe a month or two months. UF: (laughs) And this peddler would just have a horse and on the back of the horse would be what, a saddlebag full of goods he was selling? BS: Well now he would usually come in on buckboard or something, you know a— UF: Yeah, okay. BS: When he come, the Rawley man. They used to make the best pie filling. I can remember that pie filling now. They’d have coconut and lemon, different kinds of pie filling. UF: And you’d pay for that with cash? BS: Yeah. UF: Always? Or did you ever trade for things? BS: Hm-mm. AM: Now you said they also had peddlers that come around and take pictures. BS: Yeah. They had peddlers that come around and took pictures. AM: Like the tin type pictures? BS: Yeah, tin types. Sure would. AM: Now you were asking about plants. UF: Oh, yeah. Did you ever use any of the wild plants for— BS: The only thing I ever knowed of us using was catnip. UF: Oh, and what did you do with that? BS: We’d make catnip tea. UF: And you ate butternuts. You mentioned that. Or didn’t you? BS: Oh, yes. Yeah. And you’d find, oh what’s those little round nuts like this? Hazelnuts! UF: Hazelnuts. BS: Chinkapins, had a lot of chinkapins. Ms. Elsie and them had their woods full of chinkapins over there. We used to get chinkapins. UF: There aren’t many up there now I don’t think. BS: No. UF: And when you were little, you remember gathering chestnuts? BS: Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. LS: Did you have any horse chestnuts up there? BS: Not that I know of. Some few trees around was horse chestnuts. You know what horse chestnuts are? UF: Yeah. BS: They’re great big chestnuts like that. UF: They aren’t good to eat? BS: No. My granddaddy used to carry one in his pocket all the time. He said— UF: For good luck? BS: To keep a toothache away. UF: Keep a toothache away. BS: And I never knowed of him having toothache. And he carried that in his pocket till he could just (trails off). UF: I heard that. I heard it was a good luck charm. BS: Yeah. UF: To keep a toothache away. How about berries? BS: Oh, we had plenty of those. UF: You’d gather berries? BS: Yeah. UF: In the summertime? BS: Blackberries and raspberries and fox grapes. That’s what we used to make jelly out of, fox grapes. And they would get huge, you know, great big fox grapes. UF: I noticed a lot of wineberries in there, the red raspberries. BS: Yeah. Well, now we never used those. AM: You didn’t? BS: Do you know we didn’t have—. We eat them, but we never made anything out of them. But do you know we didn’t have wineberries on the mountain. As far as the wineberries come up was just in the edge where the Park starts on this side of the mountain. And now I see them on top of the mountain. AM: Yeah. UF: Isn’t that funny. BS: We did not have wineberries. We had raspberries, the blue ones, but wineberries wasn’t up there. Cause we used to walk down and get wineberries too. AM: You called them wineberries then? BS: Yeah, we called them wineberries. UF: What did you do then with the other ones, the blackberries and black raspberries? BS: Oh, we canned and made jelly out of them and jam. UF: Blueberries too? BS: We didn’t have any blueberries. UF: No blueberries? BS: Now you’d have to go over in Elkton part to get blueberries. They would have them over there. UF: And let me see, you raised apples. Was there anything else? BS: Oh, we had plenty of apples. UF: Did you ever raise peaches? BS: Yeah, we had peaches. We had a peach orchard one time right below our house there, between the house and the church on the right hand side. We used to have lots of peaches and pears. UF: And pears? And anybody have plums? BS: No, we didn’t have no plums. But do you know we had something that growed in our garden, they called them ground cherries. UF: Ground cherries. BS: They growed on a vine and they would get about this big. And there would be a hull on the outside of them and that hull would come off and then they’d turn a little blue. And we would make ground cherry preserves. And you know they look like, now when you think about it the ground cherry preserves looks like the figs. It had little seeds like figs. UF: And that grew just wild in the forest? Or wild in the fields? BS: No, they growed in the garden. Now I don’t know why— UF: You planted them? BS: No, we never did plant them. They come up volunteer or something, but they would come up every year. LS: There’s some by that trail going down to the Wayside on Loft Mountain. BS: It looks like them, but I don’t think it is. LS: You don’t think it is? BS: I pulled one off and showed him, but I don’t think it’s a ground cherry, but it looks like it. UF: I wonder what—. I don’t think I know that. I’ve heard of something like that. BS: And currant. You’ve heard of currant. UF: Currants, yeah. BS: We had those in the garden and used to make currant jelly. UF: Yeah. Now they grow wild too. You never picked them wild? BS: Huh-uh. Well they was wild, I guess just come up along the fence there. And we had them all along the fence there in the garden. Used to make currant jelly. UF: Gooseberries? Did you have gooseberries too? BS: No, we didn’t have no gooseberries. But now I do want you to know that we weren’t the richest people up there, but we weren’t the poorest either. You know, there were some poorer than we were and some richer than we were cause it was eight of us children. We never went hungry and we didn’t go naked. UF: Who would be the richest ones? AM: The Haney’s? UF: Were they? BS: Yeah, on the mountain they would be cause Ms. Rhoda Haney run the post office. (dog barking) Ms. Rhoda Haney run the post office then and Mr. John Haney had the store. UF: Now Rhoda Haney was John’s wife? BS: No, that was Mr. Alec Haney’s wife. But now Mr. John Haney’s wife, Ms. Lola Haney, she was a school teacher. She was my daddy’s school teacher. UF: Okay, Alec and Rhoda. And John Haney’s wife was? BS: Ms. Lola Haney, she was a school teacher. UF: Lola. AM: And she was a school teacher? BS: Uh-huh. She was my daddy’s first school teacher. UF: She wasn’t teaching school when you were at school though? BS: Hm-mm. No. AM: I’m trying to diagram, yeah. Now the post office at Fern Hill, and that was run by, what was her first name again? BS: Ms. Rhoda Haney. AM: Okay, Alec Haney’s wife? BS: Uh-huh. AM: Okay, and at first it was in her house? BS: Yeah, she used to kept the post office in her house. UF: Right on 33? BS: Yeah, right on 33. UF: And when was that? Any idea? Was that when you were a little girl? BS: Oh, I was a right good size. I guess, I don’t know how long she had had it there, but it’d been a long time I guess up until I could remember. (laughs) UF: And that was called the Fern Hill Post Office. BS: Fern Hill Post Office. UF: And then later on? BS: She moved it over in this other building there on 33. UF: Beside the church? BS: Yeah, across from the church, sets right across from it. See our road went right between that and the church up there our house. AM: So there were lots of buildings right where the Drive and 33 come together now. BS: Oh, it was. Lots of buildings in there. AM: So that was Fern Hill? That was like the center of the town there. BS: It was, on top of that mountain. AM: [unintelligible] a service station, a hotel. BS: Post office. AM: Post office, yeah. A church. And some houses. That’s bigger than a lot of towns now. BS: Yeah, sure was. Now you talking about this road right here that goes out here? UF: Mm-hm. BS: A lot of people lived out on that road. Mr. Tom Dean. That’s out right by Snap Spring. Mr. Jack Knighton. UF: Jack Knighton. Was he one buried in the cemetery? BS: Up on that cemetery. UF: Something I wondered about the cemetery is the little metal plates that were one the graves that were empty, did that used to have like a little paper— BS: It had a paper in it with their name and age and things on it. That’s what the undertaker would put up when he buried them. UF: I see. BS: And a lot of people didn’t put up tomb stones you see. UF: So if you didn’t have enough money to buy a tombstone, you’d just leave that on? BS: Leave that on, but then the weather and all would wash it off. And Mr. Tom Dean’s wife is buried in that graveyard. UF: What would her name be? BS: Sarah Dean. You got— UF: Oh, that’s right. Okay. That’s right. And it’s another one. BS: He had two wives. I think both of them was buried up there. UF: Okay. Would the tombstones be later graves usually and the ones with the metal plates on them be earlier graves? BS: No, not necessarily cause that large tombstone I was telling you about that the Knighton was buried, I don’t remember when he was buried there. But now I do remember when some of the others were buried there. There’s quite a few Knightons in there, but the large tombstone, I don’t remember that, when it was put there. UF: Where did you get your tombstones? BS: Harrisonburg. Always go to Harrisonburg. UF: One thing I guess we outta get on this is what were telling us about when the Park was being discussed and the land was being bought up and all, what your granddaddy did. What his reaction was and where he went. How he was paid for his land and all that. BS: You mean what his reaction was when they bought it? UF: Yeah. AM: Well, they didn’t hear about the Park right at first. BS: No, they didn’t know about that at first. AM: You mentioned this June Comer, I see him on the map here. Now he was the first one to come around talk about— BS: Jude. The Jude instead of June. AM: There’s a June and then there’s a J.H. BS: Yeah, that’s him. Jude Comer was the one that come around for the acre of land from people. AM: Mm-hm. And everybody was to donate an acre of land? BS: Yeah. And as far as I know, they did. I know Daddy did. [audio volume dims] And I think Mr. Alec Haney did and Mr. John Haney. As far as I know everybody did. But they didn’t know it was gonna be for no Park when they donated it. AM: They thought it was for poor people? BS: Yeah. They thought the government was gonna give poor people money out of it or something. But then when they come around and assess Daddy’s land, he had priced it and they assessed it to what he priced it at. And they paid him what he asked. He was satisfied. He really was. He never was dissatisfied. And he was satisfied to move off. He bought a place at Barboursville [unintelligible]. UF: He took the money that the government gave him? BS: He took the money. AM: And that was enough to get a new place? BS: Yeah. And he liked it better at the time. Well he always did I think cause [unintelligible] land for him and he was getting older. He had bottom land and he could raise a lot of stuff just like he did up there. And he said it was easy on him. Said he wished he coulda got a hold of it years before he did. UF: Why didn’t he leave earlier if he wasn’t happy on the hill? BS: Never dreamed of such a thing. He was happy with them. He was happy with them till he got off. AM: Then he was happier. BS: Yeah. You know he was happy with what he had and he didn’t know the difference, but then after he did get off he realized that if he’d a been off earlier he coulda done so much better. AM: Then when they moved off did some of you get to go on further in school? BS: The younger children usually did, still had to go to school. I never did go because I had to quit school when my mother died cause I was the oldest girl. UF: To take care of the children in the house? BS: And I never did get to go to school anymore. I was in the seventh grade and never did get to finish. AM: But the younger ones got to finish then? BS: Yeah. AM: The children who lived up on the mountain didn’t generally go on further in school than the seventh grade, did they? BS: [unintelligible] seventh grade [unintelligible] But we never did and no one else that I knew of. AM: Now, was there anybody up there that the government had to find a new place, they couldn’t find their own? BS: Mm-hm, quite a few. AM: Where did they put them? BS: Some of them out at Standardsville, some at Wolftown. AM: And these were resettlement homes? BS: Uh-huh. AM: You don’t remember the homestead lady. I guess she came up after you had already moved out. Mrs. Cowden (??). BS: No. AM: You probably left already by the time she came out. BS: No, I don’t remember her. Well, see Daddy was buying his own and I guess they wouldn’t come to our house anyway, I don’t know. AM: Yeah, right. I imagine people like the Haney’s and all could get their own place. BS: Yeah, they did. See, Mr. Alec Haney bought his family’s [unintelligible] right behind the school. No, I think the school took the place where they put the new school and Mr. John Haney bought over there at Elkton. Mr. Jerry Beasley bought at Barboursville. Daddy bought at Barboursville. Elmer Lam bought at Barboursville. UF: Elmer Lam? BS: Uh-huh. UF: Oh, okay. Yeah. BS: I don’t remember if anybody else did or not. AM: And was there—. So were you one of the first ones to go? BS: Yeah, we was one of them. There was a few families left before we did, but we was around one of the first. AM: Do you remember much resentment among other people? BS: Just a few of them. Now I think Mrs. Elsie Baugher and her daughter and husband stayed just there as along as anybody did up there. AM: How long was that? BS: I have no idea cause they moved to Wolftown. I don’t have no idea when they moved off. AM: You remember the CCC being up there and building the Drive and so on? BS: Mm-hm. And my sister seems to think maybe we moved from up there in the spring of ’44, but, I mean of ’34, but I thought it was the fall of ’33. But I’m not sure. Did you ever find out where the CC camp come in? UF: I tried to and I haven’t yet, but I still think I can. BS: But I know the CC camp was back there where we moved. And she said she thought maybe we moved in the spring of ’34 instead of the fall of ’33. See it wouldn’t have been much difference, but still I know the CC camp was there before we left. AM: Where was that camp? BS: Back there at Big Meadows. AM: And the boys would come out, they’d come over to the service station and— BS: [audio volume normalizes] Come over to the church in the churchyard. We used to play in the churchyard. UF: Did they come to church at Fern Hill? BS: Oh, yeah they’d come down there a lot and then they’d come there at the churchyard and play. We’d play a lot, you know, at nights. After they’d get off from their work and all, they’d come out there and have their supper at the CC camp and they put their clothes on. You know, wash and put their clothes on. Used to go out there and we used to play a lot of— AM: Play drop the handkerchief? BS: Drop the handkerchief and blowout and different things like that, you know. But some of the older people would be there to chaperone, you know. UF: Oh, yeah. Now you were a teenager then? BS: Yeah. Lots of girls around there. AM: Did many of them marry the CCC boys? BS: I don’t know of any of them. Not any of them. UF: Didn’t stay around long enough. (laughs) BS: That’s right. No, I don’t know of any of them. But I do know my brother went to CC camp after we moved off. AM: Back up at Big Meadows? BS: Hm-mm. He was in Lynchburg. See they wouldn’t send them that close to home. UF: Oh. Did people from Big Meadows come to the church too? BS: Mm-hm. UF: That’s a long ways. Fifteen miles. AM: Seem like there’d be a closer church. BS: Mr. Bob Dean, Mr. Bob Dean lived back there close to it, not quite that far, but almost. UF: Almost to Big Meadows? BS: Yeah. Him and his girls used to come to the church, but I think they had a car then. I think they would drive. UF: Was Skyline Drive built then? BS: Hm-mm. UF: But was there an old road that— BS: Yeah, this road I was telling you about right here. This went way on back up in there. AM: Oh, okay. (unfolding map) You can’t really tell from this map how far it goes. As you can see, you know, it goes back in that direction. UF: Yeah, yeah. Okay. AM: The trail would go through there now. UF: So Skyline Drive was built on what was an old road? BS: Not quite. No, not quite. The Skyline Drive was built more to the right of that. AM: Yeah. See the Drive is here on this map and it’s going up here. Yeah, this was the Drive. It was already there. UF: I got it. BS: No, I don’t think there was any road there where the Drive was put. UF: Did a lot of work. BS: Back that close—. It’s passed South River Picnic Ground a good ways is where we had an awful tragic up there, you know, Grover Meadows killed his wife and another guy. AM: I heard that record about that. UF: What is that story? BS: Did you hear the record? AM: Yeah. Ms. Dean had the record of it, Gloria Dean. BS: Gloria Dean? UF: You were telling me that story, but— LS: I don’t tell it that good though. She knows it real good. UF: What happened? BS: I don’t know. He was a jealous guy I guess. They said he was. And he had different people working for him and she had six little children. The oldest one, I think he was fifteen, oldest boy. And he killed his wife and Staunton Dean was his name. He was working there with him and he was sleeping downstairs and of course, they were upstairs. I’ve been in that house after the murder was [unintelligible] and looked around. And he killed her and then went, killed him, I don’t know which. No, he killed him first in the bed asleep. He never did wake up. UF: And he was downstairs? BS: He was downstairs. He went down and killed him. AM: And wasn’t he gonna try and bring her body downstairs? BS: He went upstairs and— AM: Got in a fight with here. BS: Tried to bring her downstairs and put her in the bed with him so he could kill her. But never could get her down those steps and she was a little bitty woman. And he was a big man. And she had coal black hair, long, almost way down here like this. UF: Way down past her waist. BS: Yes, and he pulled her hair and pulled her hair till, I saw the undertaker just take and run his hands through like that and just bring those strands of hair. UF: Oh, my gosh. BS: So he killed her at the top of the steps, he never could get her from top of the steps. So he took the oldest boy then, Cecil Meadows was his name, brought him to Standardsville, and give hisself up and them what he done. So Sheridan Dean and my daddy got on the horses and the sheriff, Russ Malone from Standardsville, they was the first ones to get there. UF: Russ Malone was the sheriff? BS: Uh-huh, from Standardsville. And they was the first ones to get there. And when they got there the girls wouldn’t let them in, you know, because they were young. The oldest— UF: All the little girls were still at home? BS: The oldest girl was— [tape break, 01:57:26-01:57:45] BS: Oh, about twelve or thirteen years old. So she wouldn’t open the door for them. So Ms. Cass Breeden lived across the road there from Dean’s Cemetery and she used to take care of that cemetery all the time. And she lived across the road and she knew these Meadowses you see. So they had to come to her house and get her and take her back up there. And then the little children opened the door for her and let them in. And the baby was nine months old I believe they said. AM: Oh, gosh. BS: And it crawled to its mother and nursed the breast after she was dead. UF: Oh, gosh. BS: Cause they could see the print of its little hands in blood all over her breast. AM: Oh, my gosh. BS: And those little girls told, now my daddy and Sheridan Dean and the sheriff rode horses back there. And them little girls told them, some of them asked them, I can see Sheridan Dean now. He said it made the hair stand up on his head to see them. He said, they asked them said, “Well was ya’ll afraid after your daddy had left?” Said, “No, we wasn’t afraid.” Said, “It was a whole bunch of people in the yard and sung all night.” Now that’s what those little children told them. I said, “I guess it was angels singing to them.” Who else could it be? Cause it wasn’t nobody around. UF: Wow. AM: Now that house is near where Pocosin Mission was. Isn’t that Grover Meadows’ place? Or is it? BS: Near what? AM: Pocosin Mission, north of South River. BS: It’d be on the left of Drive going in. AM: Oh, on the left of the Drive? Down the west side? BS: Uh-huh, down the west. Going in to Big Meadows. AM: Before you get to Dean Cemetery? BS: No, past Dean Cemetery right a good ways. Now my brother knows exactly where it was at because see he used to carry up water from that spring there when they was working on the Drive. They used to have a big metal reading up there about that and I don’t know whatever happened to it. AM: When did they make that record? Right aways— BS: No it was a good while after that. Now that Staunton Dean is buried in Dean Cemetery. And his wife, Meadows’, is buried over there at Hensley Cemetery. Do you remember me seeing that, I showed her— AM: Grover Meadows’ wife? BS: And he died, well he was in the penitentiary and someone said he went to a mental hospital or something and died. They give him ninety-nine years. AM: What happened to the children? BS: There’s a missionary home back up in there above Lydia, they called it the, it was a Brethren home and that’s where Brother Henry Knight stayed a lot, worked a lot, him and his wife. They raised them. Blue Ridge Industrial School. AM: That’s on the mountain. UF: Blue Ridge Industrial School? BS: Yeah. (unfolding map) UF: Must be on the next map up. AM: I thought it was on this one. UF: Oh, Brethren Industrial School, Blue Ridge Industrial School. BS: They raised those children. Ms. Snickley (??) was her name, was the lady that kept them, but now that Cecil Meadows stayed with Ms. Rhoda Haney and them a long time. AM: Oh, but the little ones went down to the mission? BS: Uh-huh. AM: That’s almost down in Standardsville. BS: Yeah, it’s back up from Lydia. Uh-huh. AM: What was that industrial school? What does that mean? BS: It was run by the government at the time, but now I think the Episcopals has taken over and it’s a huge school up there for children that’s— UF: They can live there? BS: Yeah. UF: And go to school? (unfolding map) BS: And they make, you should come up here, well you go up there. It’s a nicest new building there and you can buy most anything you want where they’ve made and it’s beautiful. UF: Oh, they make crafts and things? BS: Yeah. And they have a market up here in town. And on, oh today’s Tuesday wasn’t it? LS: Yeah. BS: Up here at the market you can homemade bread and cakes. And they usually come in on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. UF: That’s made by the kids, the children? BS: Made by, uh-huh, the people at the school. UF: Something else on that map, Haneytown? BS: Haneytown. Now, that’s back up in there too, isn’t it? UF: Yeah, just north of that school. There’s Haneytown Creek and Haneytown right here. BS: You don’t see Shifflett Hollow in there, do you? (laughs) UF: No. (laughs) BS: Well it is. UF: There is? AM: Shifflett Church. BS: And it’s Mutton Hollow. UF: I don’t see that either. BS: Now you know— UF: Wyatt Shifflett Church, yeah. AM: Wyatt. UF: Wyatt. BS: You know up there at— AM: Right here’s the St. Louis Episcopal Mission here. BS: Which lookoff is, it’s Roach Lookoff. Is the Roach Lookoff on the Drive there? AM: Smith Roach Gap? BS: Smith Roach Gap. And look out down through there. UF: Down through Shifflett Hollow? BS: I guess it’s Shifflett Hollow. AM: Here’s Mutton Hollow, here. BS: Yeah, and Mutton Hollow. Now, I don’t even know where— AM: Mutton Hollow comes down from Hightop. BS: Yeah. AM: Swift Run, here’s Mutton Hollow, here’s Hightop, here’s Sandy Bottom. BS: Yeah, that’s the other way. Now, I don’t know where Shifflett’s Hollow is. I’m telling you, I don’t think— AM: Here’s a Roach River. Does the Roach River run through it? BS: I don’t know. It’s a river runs through there someplace. UF: Was Haneytown the same Haney’s that lived up on at Fern Hill? BS: No, I don’t think so, but I never was in Haneytown. I don’t know what that was. (speaks to LS) Oh, yours is gone. Have you been getting that [unintelligible]? LS: Yeah. UF: (laughs) LS: It’s started working. UF: What happened we never talked about today was what your house looked like. You told us before. BS: Well it had a rock chimney. UF: From the field stones? BS: Yeah. UF: Gathered up? BS: Mm-hm. And Daddy I reckon built our chimney as far as I know. It was there when I remember cause I was born there. It had a porch on it all the way across the front. And it had a huge big living room they called it. That had a fireplace in it of course, but they closed it up and put a heater in it. (phone ringing) UF: Put a wood stove in it? BS: Uh-huh, yeah. And then it had a room in the back, a huge big room back there and two rooms upstairs. You go up the steps, there’s two rooms up there. UF: So it was two stories? BS: Yeah. It was two stories. And then it was another room built on out from the kitchen there. We had built a room on to that. Now I remember when that was built on there, but I don’t remember the others. UF: Was the main core of it, did you say it was a log cabin? BS: Yeah, it was made out of logs. UF: And then you added— BS: This one room that, no two rooms I guess that wasn’t log. Yeah, I think it was just one room to begin with maybe that was logs, that and upstairs. I think from my granddaddy and grandmother lived there. UF: The living room and the two bedrooms upstairs? BS: Yeah. UF: And then you added on— BS: Yeah. UF: The back room? BS: Uh-huh. That must have been what it was. When they lived there, you know, cause she cooked on the fireplace. UF: Oh, she did? Your grandmother did? BS: My grandmother cooked on a fireplace. Yeah, I don’t remember it. UF: And then your mother got a wood stove? BS: Oh yes, she had a range. But I remember one time where we would close the fireplace up was after our grandmother would make us an ash cake. And she said to my mother, “Well I’m gonna make it. I don’t know whether they’re gonna eat it or not.” She went in there and cleaned that fireplace out real good, you know. And you used certain wood. Looked like to me it was, I think it was chestnut wood, might have been. She started the fire and fixed us some ash cakes. And you know what ash cake is? UF: I don’t think I do. I’ve heard of it. BS: Well, it’s cornmeal. You make like you’d make cornbread except you put the cracklins in it. And then she’d make it in pones. She wouldn’t make it thin, you know. She’d make it kind of thick so she could take her hands and do it like this and make it in long pones and put it right down on those ashes and cover it with ashes and cook it. UF: Be like a square? BS: Yeah. UF: That would be what, maybe a couple inches thick? BS: Yeah, and long. A little bit longer than it’d be wide cause she’d do it like this, you know, in her hands. And then you’d take it out and— UF: She put it right down in the bottom of the fireplace? BS: On the ashes. She’d have some ashes under it. Right in the ashes. UF: Put it right on the— Good grief. BS: And then she would take and put ashes over it and some coals on top of it and let that cook. And then when you take it out, you take a knife and scrape all of that off, the ashes— UF: All the black? BS: All the black, ash and everything. It’s delicious, delicious. LS: [unintelligible] Have to try it. UF: You can’t do that in a stove though. You gotta have a fireplace. BS: You’d have to have a fireplace. AM: We didn’t talk about the chestnuts today. BS: No we haven’t. (laughs) Mrs. Eva say anything about the chestnuts? UF: She said that they gathered chestnuts to buy school books. BS: Yeah. Well, you probably did, school books and anything you wanted for extra yourself, you know, and all that stuff. AM: You had talked about gathering chestnuts for Christmas. BS: Yeah, yeah. We’d gather chestnuts and then take them off and sell them for us. Now, that’s when we’d get to go to Harrisonburg. UF: For what? BS: To buy anything we wanted. Like if we wanted different underclothes or shoes or anything of our own. AM: And this is at Christmas? BS: Yeah. AM: So you were buying like presents for yourself? BS: Yeah. Now, I don’t remember ever buying school books with them, but maybe they did, you see. We’d always buy— AM: How’d it feel when the chestnuts started to die? BS: I don’t even remember hardly when they started dying. UF: You were real little? BS: Yeah. I don’t remember hardly when they started—. I remember picking them up and all that, you know, and taking them off and getting the money. Cause we used to pick them up and we’d get a big bag full, oh and we’d have a whole lot then, you know, we thought. UF: Do you remember when there were a lot of dead chestnut trees around? BS: Yeah, cause I know my daddy, when they started dying, I remember my daddy going back there to Mr. Johnny Shifflett’s. That’s past the cemetery, right straight on back from the cemetery. UF: Towards Big Meadows? BS: Yeah. UF: North of the cemetery? BS: Mm-hm. It’d be there on back. Mr. Johnny Shifflett lived back there and Mr. Charlie Frank Conley (??). And I remember my daddy going back to Mr. Johnny Shifflett’s then and he had him to cut down some of his chestnut trees and give what chestnuts was on them and I don’t know what he made out of the wood, maybe rails or something, I don’t know what, to see if it would save the other trees. UF: Oh, really? BS: Uh-huh. UF: That was when they were starting to die? BS: Starting to die. And see they thought they’d cut down the ones that looked like they was dying and it would save the others. But it didn’t do it. UF: You must have been very small then. BS: Yeah, I was. [audio volume dims] Cause I know it wasn’t but about three or four of us old enough to pick up chestnuts. UF: Three or four years old? BS: I mean three or four of the children old enough to pick up chestnuts. Me and my two brothers, and me and my sister was about all that was old enough to pick up chestnuts. The rest of them was too young. UF: How many years between you and your younger sister? BS: Two years between me and the one next to me. So the chestnut trees must have died a long time, you know, before we moved off the mountain. They had to. UF: Do you remember them cutting the dead wood after that or what did they do with those standing dead chestnuts? BS: They would cut it down. Daddy would make a lot of rails out of it. You’d have your rail fence. [unintelligible] And my aunt has some up here at Lydia, really no use because she’s got another wire fence there. I told my husband I was gonna ask to see if I couldn’t get a few of them. UF: It didn’t really affect you much though when the chestnuts died? BS: Huh-uh. UF: You just missed being able to eat them? BS: Just be able to eat them and all and no, it didn’t affect us. AM: Anything else you can think of that sticks in your mind? BS: Anything you can think of that I’ve forgot? LS: I can’t think of anything you forgot. AM: I don’t think you’ve forgotten anything. (laughter) BS: He really usually remembers some things I’ve told him and I forget. (laughs) LS: You mentioned the Ku Klux Klan would be out there. BS: Well, honey I don’t remember then. LS: You don’t remember? Oh, that was before. Of course it would have been. BS: I don’t know anything about it. I’ve heard them talk about it, but I don’t know nothing about that. I have heard them say that they was around here some. That’s years ago. UF: Were there any black people up there at all? BS: Not a one. We had one lived over here on this side of Standardsville, on the other side of Standardsville, down at the bottom of the hill at Lydia. Called him Uncle Sam Logan. He used to come across there with his horse and his bucket. And we’d always have to call him Uncle Sam cause my mother was raised down there next to Lydia, you know, and she knew him. UF: Uh-huh. And he had a place down there? BS: Uh-huh. UF: And farmed too? BS: And he’s the only one I knew of anyplace. Cause I know used to every time he’d come across there, if we was out anyplace where he would see us, he’d say, “How’s Ms. Des today?” See, he knew her. And we had to be nice to him too. Yeah, and he’s the only one I knew of anyplace. UF: If there’s nothing else you can think of, I think we’re just about—. I asked all the questions I can think of too. AM: Yeah, yeah. Boy, you surely remember that one. UF: Yeah, you do. We sure thank you. AM: We appreciate it. BS: Oh, you’re certainly welcome. [End audio file, 02:13:31 min.] End of Interview Bernice Shifflett, 8-29-1978 SdArch SNP-111 25