Tag: appalachia

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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…

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Wisdom Lost

Today would have been Daddy’s 81st birthday. He’s been gone for four and a half years already. I think about him a hundred times a day. It’s still hard to believe that he’s gone. Not a day goes by that I don’t get sad thinking about all the things we never got to do together, all the places we never got to go… The fly fishing trips we wanted to take. The backpacking and other camping trips we dreamed of taking together.

            I think of all the stories about his life that he still had to tell. During the final couple of weeks he lived he was still telling me new stories that I had never heard of his younger years, his exploits making liquor and mischief while running around in his hot rod 1956 Fords.

            Every day I need to ask him something. Whether it’s general life advice or how to do something, there’s always something.  Like most rural Appalachian folks of his generation, he knew how to do pretty much everything. An expert at cobbling things together to keep machinery and tools together without replacing them, I have no doubt that he saved thousands of dollars in repairs. When Amy and I cleaned up his house to sell after his death, she was amazed at his ingenuity. He had hand carved doorknobs, latches, and even hinges at his house.  

            I’ve been a woodworker for 40 years, and still need his knowledge daily. I wish I had another 20 years with him to learn more woodworking skills from his vast store of knowledge. I make Appalachian ladderback chairs, but Daddy never got around to teaching me how to weave the hickory or oak bottoms. I have to farm that out to someone. Daddy could weave a beautiful herringbone pattern in an hour. I’m sure I will learn the technique, but I wish he had taught it to me.

            And then there are the tools. We have countless specialty tools in the shop for making musical instruments. I’ve made instruments since I was a little boy, but I have no idea what some of the templates and jigs are used for. Daddy had jigs, templates, and patterns for everything. He had all of the stuff to sharpen and set teeth on crosscut hand saws. I wish he was here to show me the proper way to do it.

            I’m sure he’ll be smiling down on me (or laughing at me) in the next few weeks. Amy and I moved back into my childhood home last year. The remodeling project is ongoing, but it’s getting there. Daddy would be a great help as I muddle through it. We are making a huge garden this year. He would be right there with us, riding the Cub tractor and telling us what we were doing wrong. I guess he is still here in many ways. And I’ll be starting a new batch of chairs at the end of the summer, splitting out the wood for them by hand with Paw Paw’s hundred-year-old froe and an ancient wooden maul. I can envision Daddy sitting on his stool drinking coffee and telling me stories of doing it when he was young. He taught me how to make the chairs and how to use a froe. He showed me the ways to read the grain of the log in order to get the easiest splits and the best pieces. He managed to use almost every inch of the wood. The processing of the logs was too labor intensive to waste anything.

            When I do all of these things Daddy is still here with me. While there is so much more that I could have learned from him, the skills he taught me and the life lessons are priceless.

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Farewell to Andy’s

How do you say goodbye to a landmark, an institution, an icon? The news broke on Facebook a few weeks ago that Andy and Deborah Hunter are closing Andy’s Market at the end of this month and are retiring. No two people deserve to retire more than them. Their work ethic likely won’t be seen again. The only other store owner whom I had the pleasure to know with a work ethic like that was the late Charlie Mac Dickerson. As Andy was quoted, “After coming through these doors six days a week for 54 years, it’s time.” Wow… 54 years…

 I still remember going there as a kid back when Andy worked there for Rick Mason, several years before he bought the place…  I have literally been going to the store since I was born. Mama grew up next door to the store site, and I grew up a half mile away. Daddy and his best friend Charles refused to shop anywhere else and were in there three or four times a week. The store is the last tie to my childhood left in Rabun County. Everything else is long gone. Reeves is still around, and arguably better than ever with the younger generation running the business, but it’s not the same anymore. It’s become a conglomerate of stores, with the “hardware” store on Main Street not even really selling hardware anymore. It has lost the small town feel of my youth.

But Andy’s has always stayed the same. It even smells the same. I could be blindfolded and transported there, and I’d know where I was. Every single time I walk through the doors a flood of memories washes over me. Not a few, or even a few dozen, but probably hundreds of them. I’d stop there with Mama for weekly groceries when I was a little boy and usually begged for ice cream or candy while there. Bomb Pops, brown cows, the little bags of maple log candies. Maybe that helps explain my Type 2 diabetes diagnosis… One time our German Shorthaired Pointer sneaked around and ate a whole bag of unattended Brach’s chocolate covered peanuts from there and liked to have died.  Other times, I’d jump in the truck with Daddy to go grab something that Mama had forgotten, and she was already in the middle of cooking supper.  Sometimes when Daddy forgot to stop on his way home from work Mama would make me walk back down there and pick up the forgotten items. I told her she should make Daddy walk back down and the next time he wouldn’t forget.

I remember way back in the day when people still used lard to cook with. Not canola oil, not extra virgin olive oil. Lard. Mason’s, and Andy’s in the early days, had orange and white one-gallon buckets of lard stacked against the back wall near the meat counter. I used to beg Mama to buy one so I could have the empty bucket for a drum. She never did, and I was stuck with my drum set of Quaker Oats containers.

And then there was the candy at Christmas. I wished I’d have known that last year would be my final chance to get old fashioned hard candy and stick candy at the holidays. When I was really little, Paw Paw would have Aunt Virginia go to Mason’s and get me a box of stick candy for a Christmas present from him. I looked forward to it every year. Paw Paw has been gone for almost thirty tears and Aunt Virginia passed away a few weeks ago. Once I grew up, Daddy carried on the tradition of giving me a box of stick candy from Andy’s at Christmastime. Once Daddy passed away four years ago, I started buying myself one each year a couple of weeks before Christmas. Another memory and tradition gone…

And now a dilemma is before me. I guess I’ll have to become a vegetarian. Everyone knows that Andy’s has the best beef around. My family has bought their meat at Mason’s and Andy’s since the day the doors opened. Heck, they probably bought it at Talmadge and Margie York’s old store at the same location before Rick Mason purchased it. I hate change. I’ve said since the day I moved back to Clayton from law school that the day Andy’s closed would be the day I move away. I can’t get Amy to move. I suppose I’ll just eat vegetables and just mope around being maudlin for a neighborhood landmark fading away.

The closing of the store is made even sadder as there will be no passing of the torch as when Andy bought the grocery from Rick. It was only fitting that Andy took over from Rick since he grew up practically next door and worked there since he was a boy. This coming week the rugs will be beaten out on the handrail for the last time, Andy and Deborah will likely have a last walkthrough, turn off the lights, and lock the doors for the final time. That day the traditions will end and only the memories will remain.

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Still Hunting with Daddy: Glassy Mountain

As Daddy gets older, I have a sense of urgency to collect as many of his stories and memories as possible. He recently told me a story about one of his old liquor stills that he had never mentioned before. A few weekends ago we went out looking for the site. I enjoy historical outings, as I can turn them into educational experiences on the sly, so I had Brittney tag along.

The still site is located in the Bridge Creek community at the foot of Glassy Mountain. It is only a mile away from Daddy’s old home place. We found it quickly despite the almost sixty years that have passed since Daddy was there.

The first thing that I noticed was that the still site is pretty much right on the side of Bridge Creek Road. Although the road would have been graveled back in 1960-61, it was nevertheless a well-traveled road.

By 1960, the traditional copper pot still had been largely replaced with more modern and efficient stills. The still Daddy took us to was a type known as a steamer. More efficient than a copper pot still, the alcohol could be distilled at a faster rate, and the boiler for Daddy’s still was fired with coke. Coke is essentially refined coal. To heat a steamer, Daddy and his brother Poke initially built a wood fire which in turn ignited and heated the coke. Once the coke was burning, the furnace gave off zero smoke, which made it more difficult for the revenuers to spot.

Daddy and Poke bought their coke in bulk from Toccoa Coal Company and hauled it into this particular site on their backs in sacks weighing fifty to one hundred-pounds. They carried all the materials on their backs, including parts for the boilers and the sixty-pound sacks, or bales as they were known, of sugar. When initially constructed, the still had five mash boxes, but they planned to add at least another three.

By their standards, it was a small operation. Daddy had been cut down several times just prior to setting up the still at the foot of Glassy Mountain and the brothers were short of cash. The revenuers had been particularly hot on them, and an informer in the area wasn’t making things easier. The brothers hoped to get by for just a couple of months at the site to build up funds for a larger outfit.

Daddy and Poke finished one run of liquor at the still and forty cases of liquor were stacked nearby. They carried in a second load of sugar and jars during the following night. Unfortunately for them, an unrelated forest fire broke out on Glassy during the night. The next morning the still was found by wildland firefighters from the U.S. Forest Service searching for hot spots. They called the revenuers, who quickly came to the still site.

Rather than haul the still and materials out of the woods for destruction, the revenuers simply dynamited the entire site, right down to the cases of new jars and sacks of sugar. As we searched the site we found remnants of the boiler blown almost one hundred feet from the original location.

Undeterred by the loss of the still, Daddy and Poke quickly relocated to a new location on Seed Lake. When the law got hot on them at the new site, Daddy “left the country,” as he called it, and made liquor over in Fannin and Gilmer Counties for a couple of years, but that’s a story for another day.