by bluewaters | Mar 1, 2018 | Uncategorized
In the hills, March is a woodpecker drumming in a new season. It’s the liquid trill of tree frogs and the plaintive notes of peepers heralding the return of spring.
Its wild geese winging their way northward over the Smokies and blue jays chattering of new days to come.
It’s the sun writing tomorrow’s message on the earth.
It’s a time when winter lingers in the lap of spring.
It’s gusty days and calm days, chill days and warm days.
It’s April whispering from the ridge tops while March goes whistling down the valley.
It’s song sparrows in the alders and robins strutting in the pasture.
It’s a velvet coated bumblebee hunting for a nest site and a honeybee buzzing for the first taste of pollen.
March is the first daffodils making the whole world golden.
It’s the heavy creamy white blooms of the serviceberry and the white and pinkish waxy blooms of trailing arbutus.
It’s buds fattening on the poplars and catkins opening on the willows.
It’s violets and columbine, yellowbells and periwinkle.
It’s tiny clouds of canary yellow blowing off the catkins of the greening alders along the branch.
March is the time when the owl hoot is a mating call.
It’s squirrels frisking through the big maples in the front yard of a farmhouse.
It’s the bears in the Smokies venturing from their winter quarters.
It’s groundhogs scouting for greens and crows calling in a new register.
It’s sap rising time and rail splitting time.
It’s a mess of “creases”
It’s a parade of spring remedies – sulphur and molasses, cherry bark bitters, sassafras tea.
It’s bags of fertilizer and grass seed and clover.
It’s minnows and tadpoles.
It’s a time when trout fishermen begin to get that faraway look in their eyes.
It’s lengthening days and shorter nights.
It’s a dog dozing slit eyed in the sun and a horse grazing on a green pasture.
It’s a sky of crisp azure blue virgin of cloud.
It’s brooks talking and singing.
It’s the bloom of spicebush and yellowroot.
It’s the tops of the maples kindling their fires.
It’s anemones turning the forested jungles into a glittering white carpet.
It’s a new plowed field and the smell of freshly turned earth.
All this and more March is in the hills.
by bluewaters | Feb 22, 2018 | Uncategorized
They don’t make fighters like John Denton any more. As a rough and tumble battler, he was the fightin’est man who ever threw a punch in these parts. He was a giant of man, strong as an ox and tough as a hickory. He stood six-feet-five and a half, with hands like hams and arms that could wrestle a bull.
A Confederate veteran who had survived the Battle of Bull Run and the Siege of Vicksburg, he came out of Tennessee a hundred and fifty years ago to carve himself a homestead out of the wilderness over on Little Santeetlah Creek.
They say, “He wasn’t a fellow who went looking for trouble but he wasn’t one for running away from it, either. He would fight you fair with his bare fists, but if you ganged up on him he used whatever he could lay his hands on. He was an expert when it came to throwing rocks. He never used a rifle to kill a wild turkey or a pheasant. He used rocks. And he never missed.”
The biggest fight that ever happened here around 1890, when Big John Denton was more than 60 years old. Apparently he licked some twenty men. It started in George Walker’s general store, which stood on the present site of the courthouse square. Before it was over it had moved out onto the store porch and then into the street.
At the time, one of the principal sources of revenue to run Graham County was a poll tax of two dollars payable by all adult male citizens. The story goes, that particular morning, old man Denton had moseyed into George Walker’s store and was leaning up against the counter talking to a bunch of fellows when the sheriff walked in.
The sheriff was name Bob McElroy. He stepped up to old man Denton and demanded in a loud voice that he pay his poll tax. Denton said he had already paid it and that he had a receipt for it at his home. McElroy called him a liar. Old John made a swing and knocked McElroy to the floor with one blow of his right fist.
Old man Denton wore a long beard and he had long hair. He kept it braided in pig tails that came down over his shoulders.
McElroy came up off the floor and in his hand was a Bowie knife. He made a swoop with it and slashed off old man Denton’s beard just below his chin. Old man Denton fumbled behind him for something on the counter to hit McElroy with. He got hold of a cast iron scale weight that was filled with lead in the center. He hit McElroy in the chest with and knocked him out cold.
Some of the other fellows in the store, friends of McElroy’s took up the fight. A couple of them – short, heavy, stout fellows – drew their knives. These fellows came at old man Denton with their knives; they charged him from opposite directions. The old man saw them coming and he stepped right between them, and he grabbed this one by the back of the neck and that one by the back of the neck. He slammed their heads together so hard that he knocked both of them senseless. The knives fell out of their hands.
Others came at the old man and the fight spilled out onto the store’s porch. At one end of the porch was a stack of oak firewood used to heat the store’s potbellied stove. Old man Denton grabbed stick after stick, busting heads like a mad man.
Loud yells for help emptied the old wooden courthouse just across the square and men came running, either to join in the fray or watch John Denton battle, two, three or four men at a time. The courthouse square was unpaved at the time and large number of rocks weighing three or four pounds each were plentiful.
By now, old man Denton had run out of firewood and the fighting had moved into the square. He began picking up rocks and throwing them. Denton threw a rock a John G. Tatham, missing his head by a hair. The rock hit the front of the store with such force that it busted the weather boarding and bounced into the back of old Captain Nathan Green Phillips just where his galluses crossed.
Phillips had been in the crowd of milling men fighting John Denton, shouting “Peace men! Peace men!” and waving his arms in an effort to stop the fighting which was then raging over the prostrate and bloodied heads of several men on the ground. Phillips, who was the justice of the peace, fell to the ground with a major injury to his back. He was unable to rise and had to crawl home on his hands and knees. He was laid up in the bed for weeks.
Old man Denton was still on his feet. And except for the loss of most of his beard he seemed none the worse for the struggle. There is no record of anybody ever bringing charges against him.
For years afterwards, the citizens of Robbinsville and vicinity had a healthy respect for old man John Denton. No Graham County official was ever known to again to try to collect poll tax twice from him.
The old man died in 1913 at the age of 73. They buried him in the Denton cemetery on Little Snowbird beside his wife who was Albertine Williams, a cousin of Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States of America.
They lost the mold when they made John Denton….he was quite a man.
by bluewaters | Feb 15, 2018 | Uncategorized
The old mountain practice of trying fortunes seems to be a lost art. About all that remains is a memory of the strange but popular practice.
Every mountain community had at least one granny who knew no end of ways to try fortunes. Back then as soon as girl or boy either turned their thoughts to love they took occasion to drop in on the granny woman and beg an answer to their burning questions.
“What will be the color of my true love’s eyes?” the lovelorn ones would beg. “How will I know when I meet up with my true love? Will I have a mate at all or die unwed?”
It was a time when a girl put a heap of store in love charms. And the granny woman with second sight was always there to provide ways for the young ones to try their fortunes.
One had to do with a well and a mirror. The mirror was used to cast a shadow into the well. The face that appeared reflected there would be that your true love, that one you would wed.
Another one insisted that if you dropped a pebble into a spring whose branch flowed east the face of your mate would emerge when the ripples settled.
Another one called for going to the wheat field while the dew was still on the wheat and laying a piece of paper on the wheat. Pretty soon, the old ones insisted, your future mate’s name would appear on the paper.
Others said if you will put a handkerchief on the growing wheat at night and get up next morning before the sun rises you’ll found the initials of the one you’ll marry on the handkerchief.
It is supposed to be extremely lucky for a girl to be with her lover when a mockingbird sings at night. And if she puts the boy’s hat on during the song she will marry within twelve months and be happy in her choice.
Also the first dove you hear cooing to its mate will give a hint to the future if you sit right down and slip off your shoe. For there in the heel will be a hair. It will be the color of your husband’s locks.
The old ones warned never to step in front of a broom when someone is sweeping. To do so means forfeiting all chance of a marriage during the year.
From time out of memory, the number nine seems to have been lucky in working love charms.
“Eat nine redbuds in nine days,” the old ones suggested, “and the ninth boy or girl you meet will be your mate.”
Likewise, if you count nine stars every night for nine nights then put a mirror under your pillow; you will see in a dream the face of the one you are to marry.
Then, there are these ways:
Eat a crabapple without making a face and you can surely get anybody you want.
A girl who can kill a red-winged blackbird can marry at once the man she wants.
If a boy would have the love of the girl he desires, he must put the web of a goose’s foot into whatever drink she is sipping.
Finally, three saucers were placed on a table. One was empty, one filled with clear water, the third with soapy water. The one trying her fortune was blindfolded, the told to stick a finger in one of the saucers. The saucer with the clear water, if selected meant a young mate as a reward. A widow or widower was promised if the finger dipped into the soapy water. And a single blessedness was assured if the finger selected the empty saucer.
But such goings-on are only a memory now.
by bluewaters | Feb 9, 2018 | Uncategorized
It’s an old man with snow in his beard and an old woman with starlight in her frosted hair.
It’s sleet peppering the roof with buck-shot and rain shedding tears on the windowpanes.
It’s icicles hanging from the eaves like so many crystal daggers.
It’s the brilliance of rime sparkle on the Snowbird Mountains.
It’s a night wind whistling a lonesome tune.
It’s snow drifting in the cove like meringue on a pumpkin pie and sprinkling the oats with coconuts.
It’s Lucy, the Plott bear-hound pup, snapping at falling flakes.
It’s the lake covered with winter glass.
February is the time of the Snow Full Moon.
It’s a deep rutted country road lined with frost.
It’s maintenance crews spreading salt on icy roads.
It’s the sun rising earlier and setting later.
It’s a pale blue light that warms the green of the pines, emphasizes the buds on the poplars and the amber tones of the willows.
It’s sap rising in the maples.
It’s elms standing like plumes against the sky.
It’s tiny, tight catkins hanging from the alders trooping along the edge of the ice-laced stream.
It’s a blue jay strutting like a dandy at a cakewalk.
It’s sparrows sweeping up a hillside and wheeling into the wind against a gray sky.
It’s a hoot owl sounding his mating call.
It’s mother bear giving birth to her cubs in a laurel den.
It’s a deer and a doe at a brook.
It’s a blaze in the fireplace and good hot bowl of soup.
It’s felling trees and cutting fence posts.
It’s the longest and darkest days of the year for the trout fisherman.
It’s leather-britches in a pot and corn pone in the oven.
February is a time for sitting by the fire and reading.
It’s snow chains and four wheel drive.
It’s galax, nature’s own Valentines, making a carpet around the feet of bare trees.
It’s lichens creeping over fence rails and stumps and painting rocks with delicate patterns of red and green in shell like forms.
February is a pair of red mittens and a pair of high-top boots.
It’s a sky with the look of cold skim milk
It’s clouds all ragged and wispy and weird.
It’s a farmhouse alone on a bare mountaintop with wood smoke standing straight up from the chimney.
February in the hills is all this and more….
by bluewaters | Feb 5, 2018 | Uncategorized
The stars hung low in the night over the Indian village of Sand Town where a Cherokee chief lay in death. His widow, hugging her grief unto herself, sat staring into the fire.
There were only the cries of the whippoorwills and the requiems of the tree frogs that croaked a litany.
Death had been slow in coming to Shuttahsotee, the last chief of the Sand Town Indians who was known to his white friends as Jim Peckerwood. For weeks he had been confined to his bed and knew that soon he would enter the “Long Sleep”.
Almost daily, during this time, his friend Albert Siler had come to read the Bible to him and to pray with him. And on a recent visit the old chief had told Siler: “Shuttahsotee goin’ soon. Bury Shuttahsotee like a white man”. Siler promised him he would be buried like a white man. And then a few days later when Siler came to see him, the old chief looked out toward the setting sun and said: “This last time Shattahsotee see sun go behind mountain”.
During the night, the old chief died.
The funeral arrangements were made, and the next day they brought the body of the old Indian to the Siler family cemetery. The Rev. John A Deal, an Episcopalian clergyman, preached the funeral. A large gathering of Indians crowded the burial ground. Their white friends were there, too, paying a final tribute.
Following the funeral Siler went to see Cunstagi, the old chief’s widow. It was late afternoon and she was sitting in the doorway of the cabin gazing toward the sunset. “Shuttahsotee call Cunstagi,” she said. “Cunstagi go.”
He was not surprised when the old Indian’s son came to his house the next morning and said: “Cunstagi go to Shuttahsotee”. Siler said, “Was she sick?” And the son said, “No, She just sit in the doorway, Watch sun go, then she go.”
And once again, just a day after Shuttahsotee’s burial, the Indians of Sand Town and their white friends gathered at the Siler cemetery. They placed Cunstagi’s body beside Shuttahsotee.
And there they lie today, the old chief and his wife.
In 1932, a giant bolder of native granite that stands six feet tall. Carved into are the names of the old Indian couple and the date 1879. Church records show that they actually died in 1878.
Shuttahsotee and Cunstagi were born in the mountains. In 1838 when the federal troops came in and rounded up all the Cherokee and started them off under protest to Oklahoma, Shuttahsotee and Cunstagi were among the masses. When the troops got the couple to Tennessee, they escaped and came back to their mountains. They eventually got a small tract of land on Muskrat Creek so the government could not move them again and they lived there until their deaths.
by bluewaters | Jan 30, 2018 | Uncategorized
Back in the day, it was custom here in the mountains for the groom to give a reception to the bride and the bridal party after the wedding. This was called the infare.
The wedding usually took place at the home of the bride. The ceremony was performed on the porch with kith and kin crowded about the preacher and the happy couple. Thoughtless couples who had stood contrary to the cracks in the floor had been known to be followed by ill luck.
Usually the couple was married late in the afternoon. And when the preacher had spoken the “word” which made them one, the bride hurried into the house and changed her wedding frock for her infare dress. Then they all piled into their buggies and wagons and headed for the home of the groom’s parents for the big infare supper and a night of music making, singing, dancing and games.
Sometimes the infare wedding lasted all of three days. If the parents of the groom lived any distance, the bride’s parents gave a wedding supper. Then the next day the party moved on to the home of the groom’s parents, and on the third day the celebration continued at the home of the young couple.
The supper was a feast indeed – backbones and ribs, fried chicken, beef, country ham, sweet potatoes, baked Irish potatoes, stewed pumpkin, cakes and pies.
Sometimes a little peartnin’ juice was passed out back of the house to the men folks, but mostly the infares were dry affairs.
After supper, the bedsteads were taken down and the furniture shoved into the corners to make room for the folic and dancing. And through it all, the young folks took the opportunity to tease the bride, while the young men went further by bussing her cheek. A kiss of the modest, proper sort was not out of order. Every groom knew and expected that. And even a most jealous fellow knew how to conceal his displeasure, for it would only add to further pranking on the part of the rest if he protested.
Sooner or later, some of the young fellows would slip out and return with a pole or a rail. Others would grab the groom and wrestle him outside for a ride on the rail. When they had their fun with him, they all came back inside and had another round of dancing or playing kissing games. When they were exhausted they sat around and listened to the fiddle and banjo music. The roosters were usually crowing for day before the broke up.
Then came the young couple’s first night in the new home. And that called for a serenade by their friends. They always waited until the young couple had gone to bed and the lamps were out. Then they showed up with bells, tin pans and guns – in fact, anything that would make a noise – and then proceed to wake up the newlyweds. They kept up the noise until they were invited in for refreshments.
But all that was a long time ago….the infare and the wedding night serenade are vanished customs.
