Category: Appalachian Childhood in the 1970s and 1980s

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A Lifetime of Gardens

I sometimes find myself wondering why I even bother with making a garden. It would be hard enough with an acre of bottom land next to a creek, but it is hell making an Appalachian “side hill” garden. That’s all we’ve had since we came into our Prime Hill property the year before I was born. So that’s over 50 years fighting rocky soil, Georgia red clay, and the steep terrain in general.  Always an avid reader and a historian of the rural South, I’ve spent my whole life reading stories of the poor subsistence farmers of the Appalachians scratching out enough food to feed a family from a mountain side. Tall tales of cattle with two legs shorter from walking across steep slopes all the time. It isn’t all untrue. A man has to be creative to grow a garden on the side of a mountain year after year. We have almost four acres of land. The only “flat” land is the front yard and a half-acre on the ridge top. So we made terraces. I use a BCS “walking tractor” with a rotary plow to contour and create natural berms to hold moisture and stop run off. Whatever it takes.

As I get older I try my best to prioritize my time. Late each winter I ask myself if I want to go to the trouble and physical labor to make a garden. As cheap as they are at the store, potatoes are more trouble than they’re worth. It’s the same with several other vegetables. I do know that my garden is organic, Roundup free, and no chemical fertilizers have been used in decades, but damn, it’s a lot of work. It would be a whole lot easier to just go to the store. But I really do it to help remember my people.

Paw Paw Jess (my grandfather on Daddy’s side of the family) used to work his fields pretty hard. The old Hopkins home place had some good bottom land. Paw Paw was a good farmer when he wasn’t knee-walking drunk. Daddy always told stories that when he was a boy, Paw Paw led the mule to the field, placed a quart jar of his moonshine at one end of the field and a quart of buttermilk under a tree at the other end. By the end of the day, Paw Paw was dog drunk and he’d done worked the mule half to death. Ironically, his biggest crop was always corn, which he turned into more liquor, which he also drank.

For some reason I don’t know as much about Mama’s side of the family. My Great-Grandfather Emmett Roberts built the first housing development in Jefferson, Georgia over a hundred years ago, but I don’t know anything else about him other than he was a respected member of the community. My maternal grandfather, Ernest Roberts, went to work “up north” right after World War Two. Henry and Alene Phillips of Rabun County had moved to the Pontiac, Michigan area sometime around the end of the war. They had several related businesses in the area, including some type of boarding house. They recruited drivers for RoadWay trucking. My “Grandpa Ern”, as I always called him, procured a job through the efforts of the Phillips family and began driving a big rig.  

Sometime in the late 1960’s, Grandpa Ern and his second wife, Grandma Lucy, moved back to Georgia, buying a few rural acres on the county line of Stephens and Habersham County. Behind their house was a big flat area of a few acres. The first thing Ern did was clear it and buy an old Ford 8N tractor. Him and Lucy always made one hell of a garden. They probably grew and put up most of their food every year. Ern was always fastidious with everything he did. He taught me how to shine shoes the right way. He kept his Florsheim shoes and side-zip boots polished and buffed to a mirror finish. He was always perfectly dressed (unless he was in the garden). When mowing grass or working the garden Ern broke out the very stylish one-piece, zip up coveralls. I have some of those myself, but Amy says she’ll file papers if she ever catches me wearing them. Maybe I’ll wear them on our next date night…

Ern always favored Pendelton shirts in wintertime. He was fanatical about maintaining his trucks. His garden was no different. I never, ever, saw a weed in it. Everything was always hilled, hoed, and looked like a photo from a seed catalog. Mama always said I got my anal-retentive and obsessive traits from him. Memories of his gardens are always a benchmark for me.

Well, Daddy was a drinker during my childhood, but not on a level that could match Paw Paw. Our side-hill garden tilling and plowing wouldn’t have ended well with a bunch of white liquor anyway. Somebody would’ve rolled the tiller or homemade tractor off the side of the mountain and ended up at Ridgecrest Hospital. Daddy made the most of what we had. There were four or five manmade terraces up behind the house where we planted our regular vegetables. Squash, okra, radishes, beans, cucumbers, and that type of stuff. Up on the ridge was where the potatoes and corn got planted.

The first crop I ever planted was in kindergarten. Our class took a field trip up to town to tour the farmer’s co-op. Monique Lunsford was a classmate of mine until we graduated from high school. Her parents, Rollin and Roanne ran the store. I loved the old feed and seed stores. Still do, but they’re few and far between these days. I still remember the way the co-op smelled, even after all these years. The Lunsfords let each of us kids pick out a pack of seeds to take home and plant. I chose a pack of watermelon seeds. I don’t remember the variety. I was excited to get them into the ground. We had a junky old front-tine tiller that Daddy used to till me my own “plot” at the edge of the garden. I threw the seeds in the ground and covered them with a rake. I was five, so the seeds were forgotten and they were never watered. I was too busy playing. Lo and behold, they came up. All of them. I bet we got at least 30 watermelons from that packet of seeds. They almost overran the entire garden. We ate them till we never wanted to see another one. We gave them away and still they kept coming. I’m surprised Daddy didn’t somehow use them to make liquor.

By the time I reached second or third grade we had moved our corn operation over to Nannie’s garden spot. My maternal grandmother, Arleisa Norton, known to everyone in the family as “Nannie”, lived a couple of miles away from us and had a prime creekside piece of flat bottom ground. Nannie, Daddy, and Mama planted it each year. She often kept me during those summers so I spent many mornings in the corn patch with her hoeing corn while I listened to her tell stories. Sometimes my friend Billy was roped into helping us. As an only child, Mama had to import playmates for me each summer.  Nannie and Billy are both gone now, and I’d give about anything to spend one more day in that corn patch with them.

Time marches on and I’m still playing in a garden. This year’s crops have been horrible with all the rain. The tomatoes were a complete bust. So were the Brussel sprouts, although I might get an autumn harvest of them. Cucumbers, squash, and zucchini have been ok, and the carrots are consistent. The daily storms have made a mess of it. I actually had to weed-eat the rows instead of hoeing and weeding by hand. I’m just re-planted the last of the squash and cucumber for the season, and I’ll get some autumn greens. Covers over the raised beds will give me carrots through most of the winter, so all isn’t lost.

And of course, I’m already planning on what can be done better next season. Hopefully it won’t involve an umbrella.

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Weekend Loaferin’ and Shopping in the 70’s and 80’s.

A little more than a year ago I decided to just ride around after attending a memorial service for my college friend Todd Rock after his unexpected death. A ride down memory lane so to speak. It was pouring rain, so it wasn’t a good day to loafer, as we called it when I was a kid. I had driven down to Demorest for the service and decided afterward to check out Baldwin and Cornelia before making my way over to Toccoa to hit Harbor Freight.

 I spent my undergraduate college years at Piedmont College, long before it became a big time, full-blown “university.” I’m happy that it has grown, but I barely recognized anything while rambling through campus. I headed on down to Baldwin. It was always almost a ghost town. It can’t even be called that now. It’s gone. Of course, a Dollar General sprouted up at the corner of Hwy 441, likely the death knell for whatever businesses remained. Luckily, the Stew and Que is still around. It looks like the owners are doing a thorough remodel. I love that place and have eaten many  meals there in the last 50 years. Heck, for a couple of years a back booth served as an unofficial satellite office for me during my representation of several employees of the nearby Fieldale plant who were going through hard times.

 Seeing the Stew and Que brought back some memories. When I was a little boy, we usually didn’t have much money. That said, we always ate well when Daddy had steady work.  During the mid-to-late 1970s, he helped build a subdivision for the Murrell family somewhere around Baldwin. I guess that was when he discovered the Stew and Que. For a year or so we made the trip to downtown Baldwin on many weekend nights to eat supper. It was a big trip for me and was the longest trip we made to eat.

Once the hot lap of Baldwin was complete I traveled back into Cornelia from the south side. Other than the iconic Steak House being long gone, everything looked about the same, although the south end was significantly run down. As always, I looked around trying to figure out the former location of the White Spot. Mama always referred to it in her stories about running around Cornelia and Clarkesville during the 1950s. I’ve never figured out its location, or exactly what the business was for that matter. I think it was located on the site where an abandoned grocery store now sits. Driving into town I remembered other great businesses that are gone and will pass from memory with my generation. I’ve always been obsessed with old movie theaters. I remember being over the moon when the theater in Cornelia was renovated back in the early 1990s. It was short-lived. Unknown to me at the time, I was there for the final showing just a short time later.

Across the street was the former location of Johnny Gunn’s Barber Shop. I had several haircuts there while I attended Piedmont. Mr. Gunn was quite the character, as was Mr. Ken Martin in Demorest. Now that I think about it, most of the old barber shops had great characters.

Next up came Mount Airy. I’ve seen several photographs of the town back in its heyday. The grand hotels and restaurants were gorgeous. By the time I began attending Piedmont in 1990 the beautiful old hotels were gone for a couple of generations, replaced by package stores, beer joints, and pawn shops. I’m a Hopkins from Rabun County. I’ve seen my share of rough beer joints, often going into them looking for uncles to see if they were able to work with us the following day. The beer joints in Mount Airy were known to be rough on a whole different level, with even my uncles warning me to keep my ass out of them. For better or worse, it looks like even the Mount Airy places are shut down.

Next was a ride down what is now known as Dick’s Hill Parkway. I’ve climbed that “hill” too many times to count on bicycle rides back in the day. My grandparents lived close by on Rock Road. What was once a neat old, abandoned store owned by the Irvin family sat crumbling into the earth at the intersection of the two roads. At the bottom of the mountain, I headed into Toccoa. We did much of our out-of-town shopping there when I was a kid. Mama’s daddy and stepmother lived close to Toccoa and we often went down to see them on Sunday afternoons. We’d go into town and have gourmet seafood at Long John Silver’s. It was fine dining for us. I’d order the Peg Legs with “extra crinkles,” as I called them. I thought those crunchy bits tasted better than the actual chicken. Still do…

After getting our bellies full, we’d go shopping. Back in the 1970’s and 1980’s Toccoa was a hopping place. Some towns still had “blue laws” and most stores were closed on Sundays, but not Toccoa. There were numerous places to go back then. JC Penney, Kmart, and Sky City; Toccoa had them all. After making the rounds, usually just looking, as Mama and Daddy were too tight to spend money, we’d visit with my grandparents a little longer and head back to Clayton. It’s sad to see how Toccoa has died off during my lifetime. So many places have gone away. I especially miss Sam Sosebee’s restaurant downtown in the plaza. He made the best hotdogs ever. A relative of his opened the joint back up for a bit fifteen or twenty years ago, but it only lasted a short time. And then there was Ed’s Barbeque on the road back towards Hollywood. We sometimes rode down there to eat on Friday nights. I can’t remember anything about the food. I do remember he had a couple of kid-sized picnic tables up front. I always sat at one of them while Mama and Daddy sat further back. Good times.

Most of the old, native-owned stores and restaurants are long gone now, replaced by trendy upscale places owned by “move-ins”. I have to admit, some of these places are pretty neat, but they always seen to come and go. The owners just aren’t invested in our community long-term and move on to the next best place within a few years. While a few dwindling places remain as they’ve always been, about all that’s left are the memories, and even those have begun to fade.

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Snows of Winters Past

Last month we received the first snowfall of the year. It was the first snow since Amy and I moved into the “Apple House.” We both act like big kids most of the time, so you can only imagine how excited we get about the possibility of snow. After twenty years, I’m finally over my disdain for snow from living in Ohio for four years. Amy’s playfulness makes it fun again.

I thought about the snows of my childhood while we watched the snow come down that Friday afternoon. When I was a really little rascal, I didn’t believe snow was real. Mama and Daddy read me stories that mentioned it, and I had seen it in television shows, but it didn’t snow at our house. The first snow we had came just before my fourth birthday. Most of the snow fell during the night. I knew it was coming, but when I woke up and actually saw the white magic I almost lost my mind. Daddy picked me up in my Spider Man footed pajamas and threw me off the front porch into the yard. Good times…

As I’ve written before, Daddy and I had lots of fun in the snow when I was a kid. Being an only child with no other kids in our neighborhood, Daddy was my partner in crime when it snowed. He loved every minute of it. After Mama made us a big breakfast, we geared up to go play. Freshly oiled boots, long johns, and toboggans on my head. We sledded down the hill in the yard until we were wet, frozen, or both. After the first couple of snows, Mama decided we couldn’t come back into the house until the end of the day. She wasn’t going to clean up after us all day. No problem for us. We have a beautiful antique Home Atlantic parlor stove in the basement. Daddy would take the decorative dome off so it functioned as a cooktop. He would haul two coffeepots to the basement. One of them he used for coffee all day, the other held plain hot water so I could have Swiss Miss hot chocolate all day. Some of my best memories are of the time Daddy and I spent posted up in our 1970’s lawn chairs with our drinks just talking in front of the Home Atlantic. He told some of the best stories during those periods.

As the years passed, we began pulling sleds around the yard behind the four-wheeler, went sledding down the giant hillside at Uncle Rip’s house, often on an old car hood, and even sneaked onto the county golf course with Big John and Little John Dixon. By the age of twelve or thirteen, I was raising hell around in the snow riding the four-wheeler with Kerry Garland and Cecil Fountain. We’d ride all over Clayton and Warwoman, sometimes hitting the 20 Penny drive-thru maybe while pulling a sled. As the years went on, Daddy and I just rode the back roads taking pictures.

The allure of the recent snow was too much to pass up. I took the dog out right at dusk the day after the snowfall and the snow-covered hillside was irresistible. I found my childhood plastic sled buried under some junk in the basement. After digging it out of the pile, I went upstairs and fortified myself with a couple of adult beverages.  It took a few minutes, but I dared Amy into going into the dusk with me. It was just before dark; the old-timers called it the “gloaming.” We took turns hauling the sled up the hill and riding down. Much of our stuff is still in storage while the remodel continues, so we made do with our outerwear. My Sweet Girl flew down the hill wearing a fleece onesie and a pair of Muck boots. It was perfect.  Neither of us injured ourselves and we got our sledding fix for a while.

I’m not going to weigh in on global warming. All I know is every year I start the garden a little sooner and harvest veggies a little later into the fall. And the snows are few and far between. I miss them, along with many things of years gone by. I ran into Cecil Fountain right before the snow and tried to talk him into some mischief once the snow fell. No luck, but maybe next time. We’re still young…