by bluewaters | Jan 3, 2019 | Uncategorized
The sound of the Church calling bell wafts out across the quiet countryside in the Sabbath morn. It is clear and sweet, touching the strings to the heart. The bell is old, older than anybody within the sound of its voice. The old bell is the voice of their church, never changing though pastors come and go.
It is the same in any rural community. Folks in many small towns hold to this, too. Even though their church may have electric chimes, they refuse to part with their old bell which still calls them to Sunday worship and to prayer-meeting. But for some reason, country golks have a closer affinity for their bells than city folks. Perhaps, it is because country folks pay more attention to a bell’s ring. Or maybe it’s because there’s clear listening and not a million sounds drumming their ears.
Bells in the country and in small towns, where Sunday is a quiet time, ring clear and true. Because of this, many a man can often sense the ways of the weather by the sound of the church bell. They can tell what tomorrow’s weather is going to be by the church bell’s muffled hollowness or its crisp clarity.
On a clear, cold night in the country, the sound of a church bell can be heard for miles. And on a bright, sunny Sabbath morning, the notes come floating down the valley and into the house.
There was a time in the not too distant past when the church bell was a sort of town crier. It spoke of deaths, of fire, of war and of peace. It called out if a child was lost or if somebody had been drowned. It spoke with urgency and folks stopped whatever they were doing and hurried to the church. As such times it wild clanging notes set the echoes flying.
In a lot of towns, there was a time when anybody in the community died, the church bell tolled out the number of years that person had lived.
For those who grew up with the sound of the old church bell in their ears, its tone and range engendered pride and a thing to be cherished. Somehow, it sang the heart to rest. And the sound of it, sweet and clear, never fails to touch the strings of the heart.
by bluewaters | Dec 19, 2018 | Uncategorized
Old Christmas will start this week. There will be no minstrels singing, no bells will be ringing. In another age, back when a changing world walked ever so slowly in the hidden hills – many a mountain family celebrated January 6th as the day of Jesus’ birth.
These were frontiersmen and the sons and daughters of frontiersmen who remained in the high coves and the secluded valleys after the frontier had passed by. They came of English or Pennsylvania Dutch stock and they passed on to their children some of the ballads and folklore their forebears fetched over from the Old Country.
Among their customs was that of celebrating Christmas on the Sixth of January. Unlike “new” Christmas with its gaiety and feasting, Old Christmas was celebrated with prayer and choral singing. When Old Christmas arrived, the folks assumed quiet, prayerful calm, putting aside the fiddle and banjo. They gathered around the hearth fire and sang the Cherry Tree Carol which foretold the birth of Jesus in these words “On the Sixth Day of January, His birthday shall be, When the stars and the mountains, Shall tremble with glee, As Joseph was a walking, Thus did the angels sin; And Mary’s son at midnight, Was born to be our king.
To the folks of that long ago era there were 12 days of Christmas, beginning December 25 and ending January 6. And throughout the Twelve Days of Christmas, or until Old Christmas Eve, there were frolics and lay games, maybe a quilting bee.
During this period they sang an ancient culminative carol enumerating the gifts sent by a lover to his lady on each of the 12 days.
The voices would ring out: Twelve days of Christmas, My true love sent to me, A partridge in a pear tree, Two turtle doves, Three French hens, Four calling birds, Five gold rings, Six geese a laying, Seven swans a swimming, Eight maids a milking, Nine ladies dancing, Ten lords a leaping, Eleven pipers piping, Twelve drummers drumming.
On Old Christmas Eve, just before the clock scratched for midnight, the family gathered about the hearth. There was the telling of The Story and talk of the night when miracles come closest to earth. With the arrival of Old Christmas, many a family brought out a jug of sweet cider and sang: Love and joy come to you, And to your wassail too, And God bless you and send you, A happy New Year, And God send you a Happy New Year. And then they would burn a piece of cedar or other fir in the fireplace.
So here on Lake Santeetlah, January 6th will be the time when we take down our tree and feed it piece by piece into the fire. And we will sit and listen to the balsam pieces crackle and watch the flames turn blue and smell the unforgettable fragrance.
by bluewaters | Dec 13, 2018 | Uncategorized
To many an old timer who grew up here in the mountains, oranges were as much a part of Christmas tradition as holly and mistletoe, eggnog and boiled custard. Whenever they whiff the pungent smell of an orange being peeled, no matter the season, they think of Christmas. For as children in a world where the commonplace things of today were rarities, they never saw oranges except at Christmastime. And they believed that oranges could be bought only then because merchants never displayed them at any other season.
Nobody knows just when they became an inseparable part of Christmas here in the hills, but by the 1870’s the account books kept by the country storekeepers showed that oranges were bought generally. For the next forty years, except in Asheville, oranges seldom if ever showed up in the stores except Christmastime.
Back when they were a real luxury for mountain folks, families bought a dozen oranges and felt that they were well supplied. Folks scrimpted and saved, hoarding up their eggs for trade at the country store, to be able to have oranges at Christmas. To the children of that era it was not Christmas without getting an orange.
Many an old timer remembers with heartwarming nostalgia the joy of waking up on Christmas morning to find a golden ball in their stocking and to discover that Santa Claus, in a generous mood, had left an additional six or seven oranges by the fireside.
The children hung on to those left in their stockings as long as possible and shared with the whole family the other which were peeled one at a time and eaten one at a time with their mother passing the fruit around in segments.
Many an old timer, looking back to his youth, is haunted yet by the smell and taste of those oranges of his sprouting years.
Just as oranges became a part of Christmas tradition with mountain folks, so did raisins and coconuts. And like oranges, they showed up only at Christmastime. Raisins had a special appeal for children. They were unlike the packaged moist raisins carried in the stores nowadays. They came in big wooden boxes. They were dried on the stem and were bought by the bunch. They too found their way into many a child’s Christmas stocking and they created almost as much excitement as an orange.
During this same era, coconuts found their way into the mountains through enterprising drummers who induced storekeepers to hand a few at Christmastime. As they caught on fast and became a vital part of Christmas. Out of them came the coconut cakes as a Christmas tradition in most mountain households. Opening coconuts was a real adventure back then. First the soft eyes were punched out in order to drain off the richly flavored milk, which proposed the problem when there was more than one child in the family and not enough coconuts to produce more than a sip for each. Then there was the business of crack the hull and extracting the crust of meat. The best way was to saw open the nut, thus retaining the lower half of the shell which made an excellent bowl for a dipper or for storing soft soap. Once the meat was extracted, long hours went into grating it over coarse homemade graters into bits and slivers that eventually found their way into a thick coconut cake.
Coconuts still show up at Christmastime in the stores and many a mountain woman turns to them for her cake making. Like oranges and raisins, they have become commonplace nowadays. Yet to many an old timer, all three are a part of Christmas tradition in the mountains.
by bluewaters | Dec 5, 2018 | Uncategorized
For folks who cling lovingly to the traditions, this is the season of the punch bowl, the steaming cup and the syllabub churn. Like snow, mistletoe and holly, the festive bowl and the hot grogs and chilled nogs are inseparable from the tradition of Christmas.
Though somewhat neglected in these streamlined days of quick mixes, the traditional festive potables still hold an honored place among hosts and celebrants to whom hospitality is almost an ancient rite. There is nothing complicated about making eggnog. To make approximately six glasses, you will need six eggs, a pint of milk, nutmeg, six teaspoons of sugar and twelve teaspoons of brandy or whiskey (brandy is preferable, either peach or apple).
First you beat the yolks well, then add gradually the sugar until creamy. Next comes the milk, pouring it in slowly, beating all the time. Next the brandy and lastly the well beaten whites (a fork or wire whisk should be used instead of an egg beater). When it is completed, fill the glasses, grating a little fresh nutmeg on top and serve at once.
Back in the day, the mountain folk sometimes made syllabub right at the table. They had little churns. Some of them were attractive hand-painted china containers. Others were handmade affairs of tin with a small wooden dasher.
A modern syllabub is little more than whipped cream, flavored with wine and sweetened to the taste. But the early way is to whip the cream and, as the foam rises, it was skimmed off, making a foamy light drink.
The ingredients for syllabub is one quart of cream, a cup of fresh milk, a cup of sugar, a teaspoon of vanilla, a half cup of grape juice or a fourth cup of orange juice and a fourth cup of wine or brandy. Once you have all the ingredients cold, place them in a large bowl and beat until frothy. It should be served just as soon as it is made.
Cheers!
by bluewaters | Dec 4, 2018 | Uncategorized
When a bunch of yarn spinners gather out on the porch in that wistful time between daylight and darkness, when the peepers begin to pipe and the shadows begin to glower, the talk sooner or later gets around to corn-likker.
And, when it does – well, brother, just be sure you hold on to your credulity.
Of course, if you’re disposed to doubt, then it’s high time to either head for the loft or keep your settin’-chair as soon as one of the old timers rears back and announces: “Whatever I talk of as facts, you can count on as true as Scripture”. Then maybe he’ll launch into the story of fabulous “Aunt Tiny”, a blockadin’-woman who made likker openly in her own cabin as long as she lived and gave the revenooers fits because she weighed more than four hundred pounds and they could not squeeze her through the door.
Or about the folks way back in the Smokies who blamed bad roads for turning to blockading, arguing that corn being the only farm produce they could trade for store credit or tax money, the only way they had of getting it to market was in jugs.
Maybe one of the old timers will get around to remembering the time a preacher tried to persuade an unreconstructed 92-year-old hillsman to give up corn-likker, which caused the oldster to allow: “I ain’t goin’ on skim milk on this side waitin’ for cream on the other side, ‘cause the cows might be dry.”
Or one of the yarn-spinners might get around to telling about Quill Rose, master distiller of the Smokies, who operated whiskey stills for more than fifty years and never was indicted until he was caught making a run he had promised himself would be his last.
The talk, naturally gets around eventually to the merits of corn-likker, which, incidentally, is the most maligned stimulant in America, albeit the purest whiskey in the world. Real corn-likker, that is. The kind the old timers made.
Why, time was a mountain man turned up his nose at whiskey shipped in from outside, allowing a fellow was a plump fool to pay government rates on it when he could make his own. Besides, he considered the stuff shipped in from outside was nothing but old pop-skull. He referred to it as “pizened likker” since it was all colored up and doctored.
When a fellow made his own, double-footin’ it in a copper still from sour mash, he made it fit to drink and knew it to be as pure as spring water. Of course, old timer will tell you that real corn-liker – the pure, unadulterated mountain corn – is mostly a memory and about as scarce as hen’s-teeth.
It was corn whiskey that not only gave a man a whoop-and-a-holler but could run a gasoline engine too. As a matter of fact, many a T-model Ford in the hills ran just as good on corn-likker as on gasoline.
As late as the early 1930s, when real corn-likker was not too uncommon, the chairman of the state planning board let it be known that serious consideration was being given to burning corn-likker as a fuel in state operated vehicles.
Maybe he was being a bit facetious or green before his time but, be that as it may, he stirred up a lot of talk. And there were mountain folks ready to vouch for corn-likker as high-powered motor fuel.
The merits of corn-likker as a motor fuel came up for consideration when Capus M. Waynick was chairman of the state planning board. He got the idea after hearing a couple fellows tell about running out of gasoline up in the hills when they were miles from the nearest filling station.
Stranded on a back road, they didn’t know how they were going to get out. It was night, black night, and stormy too. Well along came a mountain man. Apprized of their situation, he said he reckoned he might be able to help them. And he took off down the road, leaving them wondering what he had in mind.
It wasn’t long until they found out. The mountain man came back lugging a gallon jug.
“Where in the world did you find that gasoline?” one of the travelers asked. “Ain’t gasoline,” the mountain man explained. “It’s corn whiskey. The pure stuff. Best you ever put a tongue to. Made it myself, and I can vouch for it. Better’n gasoline for runnin’ an engine.”
The driver, a bit skeptical, climbed into the car and stepped on the starter. There was a series of explosions, sort of like a mule trying to bust out of a barn, and then the motor began to hum. They drove that car about twenty five miles on that gallon of corn.
When Waynick heard about it, an idea began to simmer. And one day he called in a bunch of newspapermen and dropped his idea. He said the state was using more than ten million gallons of gasoline a year in its highway trucks and buses and he figured corn-likker would be cheaper and much more powerful.
Waynick pointed out that the state had no petroleum deposits then explained he had been informed that there was a surplus of corn-liker that might be used for fuel.
Chemists who were called into his office on the matter said there was no doubt about gasoline engines running on alcohol. They said that right as that very moment it was being done in Central and South America.
“Burning alcohol,” one of them said, “isn’t a pleasant smell.” Somebody else said it was a shame to waste good likker like that. But Waynick had the last word.
“I’ve been thinking for a long time,” he said, “that liquor should be in the gas tanks and not in the drivers. You know, they’ll run a lot better. The cars, I mean.”
However the state never did make the switch over from gasoline to corn-liker as a motor fuel. And as previously stated, when a bunch of yarn-spinners gather out on the cabin porch in that wistful time between daylight and darkness…
by bluewaters | Nov 28, 2018 | Uncategorized
There is a pot of gold and cask of brandy hidden somewhere in the laurel crowned hills hereabouts. For over a hundred and fifty years folks have been trying to unearth this golden cache, but it has proved to be just as elusive as the proverbial treasure and the end of the rainbow.
Phillip Gillespie, a rifle making man from a rifle making clan, buried the gold and brandy in an underground vault back in 1862 and then went off to fight in a war that swallowed him up.
The spot he picked to hide his fortune was a secret he held unto himself and the secret died with him on some unknown battlefield far from the hills of home. It is locked in the ancient earth of Forge Mountain which stands like a grim prophecy.
The land has not changed much since Phillip Gillespie buried his gold and his brandy. It is essentially the same. And a soil that cannot be plowed under keeps it secrets. Be that as it may, folks keep on searching because there is something a treasure that fastens upon a man’s mind. But, then, these are folks who never knew Phillip Gillespie or his intentions.
When he decided to offer his rifle gun and his trigger finger to the Confederacy, he told a bunch of mountain men gathered at his gun shop. “I aim to make certain no man ever spends my money or any red-legged revenuer ever lays eyes on my brandy.” And then proceeded to do just that.
The Gillespies had come out of Pennsylvania, out of Lancaster, where the patriarch of the clan had established a reputation as a famous gunsmith. A pioneering son named Matthew followed Daniel Boone down into the wilds of the Blue Ridge and then came to the Smoky Mountains where he set up a gunshop near Phillip Sitton’s iron works under the dark shadow of Forge Mountain.
He married one of Sitton’s daughters. She gave him three sons. They became gunsmiths, too, and shaped the guns kelps hammered out by their grandfather. They added luster to the Gillespie name which already was synonymous with rifle gun wherever frontiersmen gambled their lives on the trigger finds.
One of the sons was Phillip. By the time he was 20; his gun-craft had earned himself a right smart fortune and made him a man of property. Between his gunshop, which produced prime rifles, and his apple orchard which produced a right peart brandy by way of a homemade distillery, the gold coins literally poured in and Phillip Gillespie stashed them away in a leather poke.
Taking a cue from his Scotch-Irish ancestors, he believed that any man had the inherent right to make and sell brandy, law or no law, and the fruits of a man’s labors should not be taxed. He never had paid out any of his gold coins in tax on the brandy he made and he didn’t ever aim to as long as he lived. By the time the Civil War came on, Phillip Gillespie had succeeded in keeping to his aim without too much trouble with revenuers.
He was still a young man when old Edmund Ruffin hauled off and fired the shot that started the Civil War down at Fort Sumter. News travelled slowly back in those days and it was some time before folks hereabouts realized what was happening. And when they did hear, it did not mean much. But, in time, the war became a real thing to them.
It wasn’t long until every set of powder irons in the entire area had been pressed into use. Many of the local farms were producing charcoal and saltpeter for gunpowder. By and by, the summons for enlistment in the Confederate Army reached these parts. Guns were polished and grease boxes filled. Powder horns were fitted with new leather straps. Bullet ladles and bullet molds lay side by side with the stout shot bag of linsey-woolsey.
Everything was ready for an early morning start. But Phillip Gillespie had one more task to perform before he left for the fighting. It concerned his poke of gold coins, which now held a fortune of some $1600 and 50 gallons of brandy. The gold mostly was Bechler coins, minted down at Rutherfordton. The brandy was in a stout barrel which a neighboring cooper had fashioned of oak staves and tied with hoops of tough young hickory saplings. It was built to endure.
“No, sir” Phillip Gillespie mused. “They’ll never find my brandy and collect any part of my hard earned gold for tax.”
So when night came on, he slipped out of the house with his poke of gold coins tightly packed in an earthen crock he had taken from his mother’s spring house.
He moved off to the barn and hitched one of the oxen to a sled. He rolled his cask of brandy from its hiding place under some straw and loaded in on the sled. Then he set out for grim Forge Mountain. He had a pick and shovel with him, and he carried a rifle gun.
Somewhere in a cove up there, Phillip Gillespie halted his ox and sled and dug an underground safety vault. He lined it with rock and built it to last and preserve his treasure. Finally he placed the gold and the brandy in the vault. He sealed the cache with more stones and then packed earth over it. And over the newly turned earth he spread leaves and brush to hide all trace of the thing he had done. Satisfied with his handiwork, he turned toward home.
“I’ve hid it good” he told his folks. “Won’t nobody find it. It’ll be there when I get back.”
The following morning, Phillip Gillespie said goodbye to his folks and marched off to war with his long rifle in the crook of his arm, a rifle gun he had made with his own hands in his own gunshop.
News of the war’s progress trickled into the isolated settlements of the Smoky Mountains and the news was not good, for the new was not of battles lost but of men of the settlements killed.
It came stark and terse…Killed at Seven Pines…Missing at Malvern Hills…Died of wounds received at Chancellorsville…a roll call of home boys dwindling.
Stragglers and deserters roamed the country, plundering and pilfering. Old man Phillip Sitton was shot by a renegade as he stood in the doorway of his home.
The war went on and there was no word of Phillip Gillespie. Then the war was over and those who had survived began straggling back. They waited for Phillip Gillespie, but he never did come back.
Folks remembered his talking of hiding his gold and his brandy. So they started searching for the golden cache. They’ve been looking for it a long time now. It’s become a legend and a tale to tell around the fire. But the gold and brandy are still there. For Phillip Gillespie said he aimed to make certain that no man ever spent his gold or any revenuer ever eyes on his brandy!
