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Cain: This is an interview with Lois Black
on, I started to say October, Aug. 3, 1998, on the front porch of her home on
North Turkey Creek. I guess the first thing I want to get at is, I was raised in
Tennessee but spent most of my life in Michigan, so, I'm pretty much a Yankee.
There are other people that are, oh, country folk or city folk. Would you
consider yourself a mountain person?
Black: Well I guess so. I've lived in the mountains all my life.
Cain: Pretty good place to live?
Black: It is. I wouldn't trade it for these
states that's flat and, you know, all like that. I like the mountains.
Cain: Both the way it looks?
Black: Uh huh.
Cain: And the people?
Black: Good people.
Cain: Where did your ancestors come from, when did they first come here?
Do you know?
Black: No I don't.
Cain: Well, how far back can you go with 'em? I mean, your father, what
was his name?
Black: Ellen (cq).
Cain: Ellen?
Black: Ellen Garrett.
Cain: I'm sorry. A-L-L-E-N?
Black: A double "L" E-N.
Cain: He was a farmer?
Black: Yes.
Cain: Where did he farm?
Black: On Sandy Mush.
Cain: Okay.
Black: He had a lot of land up there.
Cain: About how many acres?
Black: Oh he had, I don't know, I'd say 600 or 700.
Cain: Wow.
Black: A lot of it was mountain land.
Cain: Right. And what kind of things did he farm?
Black: Well, in that day and time,
they had to use mules and horses to do their planting, you know, way back
when.
Cain: So this would have been even before the First World War?
Black: Oh yeah.
Cain: Was his father from this area too?
Black: His father came from South Carolina.
Cain: So that would have been some time in the 1800s.
Black: Yeah. He was born in about 1850 something. I could get the date.
Cain: Oh, that's okay.
Black: And he lived to be in his 90, just a few days of being 96 year
old.
Cain: What was his name? Your grandfather's?
Black: John.
Cain: Okay. John Garrett. Do you know why he came from South Carolina up
here.
Black: No, I never did know that. He
came up here, and I think he married a Julie Wells right here on Sandy
Mush.
Cain: I think that just about everybody who's
been around here is related. But he farmed — how long have they been doing tobacco
in this area?
Black: You know, I couldn't tell you the
number here, but it's been going on quite a while. But back when I was small and
growing up there, my folks didn't raise any tobacco. I don't know really when
they did start. Something like that you don't pay attention to the years.
Cain: But you had to help out a lot on the farm?
Black: Yeah. I had to get out and hoe corn and
help make the garden and help with the housework, too.
Cain: Do you have any sort of stories of kin,
things that people did, stories that were handed down from the
family.
Black: I don't really do.
Cain: They just pretty much worked.
Black: Yeah. I had four brothers. One of
them, he went to Akron, Ohio, worked up there at Goodyear.
Cain: Your brother that went to Akron?
Black: Hillary.
Cain: Hillary, okay. Just like the president's wife.
Black: Yeah.
Cain: Did he come back, or did he stay up there?
Black: He came back. And Gordon, he went out
west and stayed two or three year, and I don't know all of what he did out
there. I was small at that time, but he came back here. He married. He farmed
some and sawmilled some. That was Vance's father.
Cain: And then?
Black: Herbert.
Cain: Herbert.
Black: He worked on public works, some, for a few years.
Cain: In Asheville?
Black: Well, just odd jobs, I'd say.
Cain: Okay, sure.
Black: He'd be in town. He'd be out in
the county, and around and about, you know, doing odd jobs.
Cain: And the fourth brother?
Black: Well, my fourth brother died the
youngest. He went to college, and he worked at home a lot. Dad had
lots of work for Forrest to do, you know, but he didn't live only to be about
45. He died earlier than any of the family.
Cain: Wow. Was it an accident, or did he get sick?
Black: No, he had a tumor or something on his brain.
Cain: So these are your brothers?
Black: Yep.
Cain: Do you have any sisters?
Black: Yes. Mayme ~ M-A-Y-M-E, and she was a school teacher.
Cain: Did she go to college or teach out of high school?
Black: She went to college, around, well, I can't think of the names.
Cain: That's okay. Where did Mayme teach?
Black: Well, she taught at different places.
West Buncombe. She taught down here at Leicester. I
don't remember other than that.
Cain: So she pretty much stayed in the area?
Black: Yes. When she died, she lived down here
at the Leicester High School. And my other sister, she was
a teacher.
Cain: What's her name?
Black: Ora Lee
Cain: Spelling that?
Black: O-R-A.
Cain: Oh, Ora Lee, okay.
Black: Ora Lee, and she never did
marry, and she taught school, and she was teaching somewhere down the eastern
part of the state when she got sick with typhoid fever and died.
Cain: Ouch. About how long ago was that?
Black: Well she died in 1916, because I was two year old. Mayme died in
'93.
Cain: Well Mayme lived a while then, a pretty good life.
Black: Yes, she was in her 90s. My dad died a
few days of being 96, and my mother was about 93. (Laugh).
Cain: Well, it looks like you'll live to see the next millennium.
Black: Well, I don't know what I'll see (laugh).
Cain: Kin's pretty important in your family?
Black: Yes.
Cain: I was reading a story about the annual reunions in Catalooch.
Black: Yes.
Cain: All the people that were evicted from
the Smoky Mountains. A lot of the old-timers are dead now, but their families
still go back.
Black; Yes.
Cain: And, of course, new generations, so they don't know each other all
that much.
Black: No.
Cain: So they play this game of, who are you? And what that means is,
whose kin are you?
Black: Jim Hannah, now. His father was from Catalooch.
Cain: He's going back there, Jim is. The reunion is next Sunday, so I'm
going up with him.
Black: Oh. Well, my daughter was back
in there this spring. There are some old houses back in there. A lot of the
houses are gone.
Cain: They saved a few. They just tore
down a lot for firewood. Park Service didn't believe in saving them.
Black: What about that. That was worth saving.
Cain: That was. I guess what I'm saying is, you judge a person
a lot by whose kin they are?
Black: Yeah, yeah. Jim's daddy taught school here up at Sandy Mush.
Cain: Did you have him?
Black: Yes, and he had a brother,
Fred, and I went to school with him, I think in the seventh and eighth
grade.
Cain: Do young people today put as much stock in kin as your generation
did?
Black: Stock in kin?
Cain: Well, is
kin as important, is family as important to the younger people as they are to
the
older.
Black: I don't think they are. Some might be,
but you know, there are some, I don't know, they don't even visit one another
much. I see it that way. Way back when I was growing up, people, your
neighbors, they'd live a mile or two off. They didn't have any cars back then,
and
they'd walk and come and see and spend a day. And they don't do that now.
Cain: Do you miss that?
Black: Yeah. They've got some place else to
go, and if they come, they've got a car and maybe come and stay a half hour. (Laugh).
Cain: It's kind of hard to have a good visit in half an hour.
Black: Yes, it is. They always seem in a hurry. They got to go. But this
is a fast age.
Cain: I guess I'm guilty of that, too.
Black: And these telephones. You know, they
can call one another a lot of times when they might come if they didn't have one.
Cain: So a telephone is convenient.
Black: It sure is.
Cain: But you kinda lost something, too.
Black: Yeah.
Cain: Because you lost the real personal.
Black: I don't know what I'd do without the telephone.
Cain: Right, but it might also mean
that somebody you talk to five minutes on the phone instead of coming over and
setting with you for an hour.
Black: Yeah. That makes a difference.
My phone went out here a couple weeks ago on a Saturday. Well, I didn't get it fixed
until late Monday evening. I was lost.
Cain: Oh, okay. It's pretty important,
then, yeah, particularly because people don't visit in person as much
any more.
Black: They'll say, I been trying to
call you but I couldn't get you, and all like that. When the man comes to
fix it, there's field mice out here they have in these fields, something there
in the
ground been there gnawing on those wires, (laugh)
Cain: Well if you heard something funny on your phone, maybe it was a
little mouse.
Black: All I could hear, I didn't have any dial tone.
Cain: Oh, okay. A lot of your family has stayed here. Where is Dorothy?
Black: She lives down below Leicester.
Cain: Oh, okay. And she has kids?
Black: She's got one.
Cain: Boy, girl?
Black: Boy.
Cain: How old is he?
Black: He's 30, his birthday's in June. He'll be 36 or 37.
Cain: Did he stay in the area or did he
Black: No. He's in Tennessee.
Cain: Hard to find a job here?
Black: Well, he's been married twice, and his father is in Tennessee.
Cain: I was looking at the Census of
Sandy Mush, and for a lot of years, the population of Sandy Mush would
go down because it seemed like an awful lot of the young people were moving out.
Black: Yes.
Cain: You have a small farm, and you have six sons.
Black: Yeah.
Cain: They can't all farm.
Black: Not now.
Cain: And there's not too much public work for people that's good pay.
Black: No.
Cain: Is that?
Black: This community is building up
fast. There's people moved in here from everywhere. There's houses back on these
mountains and valleys I wouldn't ever think about going to. They built a new
Post Office down there.
Cain: I saw that.
Black: To handle the mail. You know, and all that's coming in here and
to put in new phones.
Cain: The new people coming in.
Black: Yeah.
Cain: Um, are they a part of the community or do they sort of stay off
by themselves?
Black: I don't know. I don't know any of them.
Cain: That was kind of one answer. They don't come around and visit
like.
Black: No, they don't visit. They might visit
one another. I don't know that. But they have to put in more boxes at the Post Office
and put in more telephones because it's building fast in here.
Cain: That means that property prices go up.
Black: I guess so.
Cain: That means taxes go up.
Black: Back when I grew up, back on my dad's
mountain, big old mountain up there. There were people living up on that mountain and had
to walk up there and walk down to the Waldrup Store to get
something to eat. You know, of course they put out a garden, made something to
eat that
way.
Cain: Did you used to go to the Waldrup's Store?
Black: Yeah, I certainly did.
Cain: Then they closed it down.
Black: Yeah. After he died, somebody
else. Well his daughter run it for a long time. Then after she died, that was
sold. And as a building, it is pretty well deteriorated, looks to me like.
Cain: Tell me about your old homeplace?
Black: Well, I don't know what year it
was built in. I don't remember, but it's over 100 year old.
Cain: And that was on Sandy Mush?
Black: It's on the head of Sandy Mush. But it's been restored some.
Cain: Oh it has? It's still standing?
Black: Yes. Well there's a fellow,
Covington, that owns that, and I don't know whether there's anybody in the house right now or not. They
were. I heard that he was in Raleigh, and he was going to come back and do some
more work, but now I don't know what's going on.
Cain: Tell me about the house itself. What kind of a house was it?
Black: It was a board, you know.
Cain: Frame board.
Black: Yeah.
Cain: Did it have a living room, parlor?
Black: Yes, it had a parlor. It was an eight-room house.
Cain: Oh. Two story?
Black: Yeah.
Cain: How, well that's a pretty good sized house.
Black: Yeah.
Cain: Of course a lot of people were raised there. You and all your
brothers and your sister.
Black: Yeah.
There was a little old house above there that my dad lived in, until he could
get a house built. And my dad was 96 year old when he died, and so it was well
over 100 year old, but I don't know how old. But Vance knows all about it.
Cain: I'll ask Vance.
Black: Vance is my brother's son. Vance can tell you most anything about
that house.
Cain: How old were you when you moved out of there?
Black: When I left out of there?
Cain: Yeah.
Black: I was about 22.
Cain: That's when you married Frank?
Black: Yes.
Cain: How did you meet Frank?
Black: Well, he's just a boy around in the community, and I saw him at
school, too, you know.
Cain: Now he, when you all were first married, did you farm, did he farm
or?
Black: Some. He went to, for a while, and
worked odds and ends jobs, and then he went to Fontana Dam and worked about
three year. He did mechanic work also.
Cain: And you went with him there, of course.
Black: Yes.
Cain: But you'd already built the house, the little green house.
Black: It
wasn't completed though. But there was some people lived in it until we come
back. We had to do some little more work to it.
Cain: Did you ever go back and see the oldhome place at the head of Sandy
Mush?
Black: It's been about two years since I've been up there.
Cain: Do you have good memories of that place?
Black: Yeah (laugh). I know there was a
spring down, a bank, below the house, and we had to carry water up
that hill. And you don't know how much water you use until you go carry it
(laugh). And I was about the right size to carry water, you know. Of course I
didn't carry it all. But eventually they built a reservoir above it and got it
into the house, had a spring house there, and we kept our milk and butter in
there.
Cain: Now you have a refrigerator.
Black: Yeah.
Cain: And if power goes out, then it spoils.
Black: Yep. I had some spoil last
winter. Our power went off here, and mine is one with self-defrosters, and you
know nothing don't stay cold in them too long. But you see you got one of the
older kind where ice formed, and you had to thaw that ice out. It'll keep longer
in there, but mine was this other kind, and when the power went off,
everything had to go out.
Cain: Frank, well he built that workshop, that cinderblock building next
to the green house.
Black: He did mechanic work there, and worked on cars.
Cain: And welding?
Black: Welding, uh huh. And he got to where he couldn't, you know, he
developed cancer.
Cain: Oh boy.
Black: He didn't know he had that for
a long time, and he worked at the Mission Hospital there a good
while. And after he found out he had cancer, in the lungs.
Cain: Was he a smoker?
Black: Yeah.
Cain: So he went to work at the Mission Hospital because, kind of hard
to make a living.
Black: At home. You know, he wasn't able to, working on cars is hard
work.
Cain: Oh yes.
Black: And so we had us some tobacco there.
And it got to where he couldn't tend to it. And so he went over there and
worked, I don't know, two or three years before he passed on.
Cain: And you stayed on in the house for.
Black: I lived there eight year after he
died. And, it got to be so much meanness creeping up, you know, people breaking
in, people coming around, and I got afraid. And then people that live on down the road
there, sometimes they was gone. I know they went to Georgia one time and was gone a
year. Now that fellow that bought it, he sold off part of that lower end down
there, and they built a house. But that house on the bank up there, that thing
is as old as I don't know.
Cain: I haven't really looked around
too much, been on the road, haven't gone back and met all the people.
Black: The people that lived there when I was
over there. They sold out and they went back to Haywood County somewhere.
Cain: So then you moved here next to your son.
Black: Yeah. He wanted me to get out from
over there. And I've been living here about 18 year.
Cain: It's pretty nice.
Black: Yeah, I like it here.
Cain: And Carl's around to help you when you need.
Black: Oh yeah. He mows my yard. I
mowed this up to two year ago, had a riding mower. I'd get out and
I'd mowed this. He was working at a job.
Cain: Right.
Black: You know, he didn't have the time he's
got now. And his wife did mowing out there, a lot of it.
Cain: Well it's nice to have family around.
Black: Yeah. I just told 'em that I
was going to have to quit. It was getting too dangerous for me to do it.
They got some banks around here, you know.
Cain: And you could tip down.
Black: And I've got, scary. I like it here.
Cain: Were you still in the green house in the flood?
Black: Yes. I was right there.
Cain: (Whistle) Got pretty scary?
Black: That was really scary. It was scary.
Cain: How high did the water come?
Black: It ran in the basement door, got the floor all muddied up, you
know.
Cain: Did you stay in the house or did you leave the house?
Black: That night?
Cain: Yeah.
Black: I left the house. Went back the next morning.
Cain: It took out a lot. I understand, didn't it take out a church?
Black: Yeah. On up the road, it washed away a church.
Cain: Which one was that, do you remember?
Black: Jones Valley.
Cain: Oh okay, they rebuilt that.
Black: And they rebuilt it up on a
hill. Above the cemetery. The one that washed away was down next to
the road there, between the road and the creek. And it took it out. I believe
that was
in '87.
Cain: '77.
Black: Yeah, '77.
Cain: Took out a lot of the bridges.
Black: Yeah.
Cain: A lot has been written about mountain
families that portrays the man, the patriarch as the boss. But I've also talked to a lot
of folk that were, it was pretty much the wife or the husband, pretty
much of a partnership. I guess in your view, is the man the boss or not in the
families?
Black: Well I think most of the time. (Laugh) Yup.
Cain: But could you get your way if you wanted it?
Black: Well, I guess so, if I acted right, (laugh). Finally talk him out
of it.
Cain: Do you attend church?
Black: No, not now. I don't drive.
Cain: Gotcha. Did you used to, though?
Black: Before I left Sandy Mush, I'd walk out to that church.
Cain: To.
Black: Payne's Chapel. Well, they quit having
church there later on. Attendance wasn't too good in the later years, and I
would ride up to the schoolhouse there where that church is. The Sandy Mush
Brick Church, they called it. It's not made out of brick. Where ever they got
that name? They always called it the brick church, but it's up there at the
schoolhouse next to the road.
Cain: Payne's Chapel was Methodist?
Black: Yes.
Cain: And the brick church was Methodist?
Black: Methodist.
Cain: Methodist also.
Black: Uh huh. But there's a couple of Baptist Churches on up there.
Cain: Well, Jones Valley is Baptist.
Black: Yeah, yeah. I forgot about that.
Cain:
And there is a big Methodist Church out Sandy Mush. Is that the one they
call the Brick Church? I thought that was white, though. With a big
steeple.
Black: Yeah, yeah. That's. Then there
is Chestnut Grove on up there that is about the size of the Brick Church here,
but it was Baptist. And there's one up on Willow Creek made out of wood. Plank.
About the same size. But there's a brick church right down here just along here
a little ways.
Cain: Religion pretty important to mountain people?
Black: Yes. They have a big attendance
up at the Baptist Church, Chestnut Grove, every Sunday, and they have a meeting
on Wednesday nights.
Cain: Part of it's religious. Is part of it social, too?
Black: Most religious, I guess.
Cain: I wondered how much of it was a
chance to kind of get out and see and be with people, your neighbors.
Black: Uh huh. They have singings and things like that.
Cain: Do you remember when it was they stopped having service in Payne's
Chapel.
Black: Not really. It's been at least 20 year ago, I guess.
Cain: Was it before or after the flood?
Black: It was after. It was a wonder it hadn't gotten that church.
Cain: I was looking at that, but it was up on rock a little bit.
Black. I don't know. I don't know what saved it.
Cain: If someone was described as a good liver, what would that mean to
you?
Black: Well, somebody that wanted to have something and did have
something.
Cain: If you were to try to talk about the
worth of a person, what's important, personally, in someone else, what kinds of
things are important to you in another person?
Black: Well, character, I guess, for
one thing, and whether they really try to get out and make a living, or become a
dead beat around. Is that the way you look at it?
Cain: We all have our own ways of, I mean, I value people who are true
to their beliefs.
Black: Yeah.
Cain: Who work hard.
Black: Yeah.
Cain: Who do things for other people.
Black: Yes, help one another. And way back,
people used to come in and help each other out. They had big jobs going on, and people
would come in and offer to help out. So and so would come and help and give a
day's work, you know.
Cain: Do they do that as much any more?
Black: I don't know. Most of 'em has to have the money, I guess.
Cain: So people working for money, not neighborliness.
Black: Yeah. Some close friends might come in and do that.
Cain: It's that way everywhere. You look at a barn raising, or something
like that.
Black: People used to go in and help with that. I remember hearing them
talk about that.
Cain: Did you ever go along on one of those to help cook or.
Black: No, I wasn't big enough to go.
Cain: So it's been a while since they were doing that.
Black: Yeah.
Cain: I also heard they would also have community corn shuckings.
Black: Yes.
Cain: And also loading up the silos.
Black: Well they'd have corn shuckings every night, try to help.
Cain: Go from one field to another, one house to another.
Black: Well, they'd gather the corn up
and bring it to the barn or where ever they was going to store it, and
they'd shuck it at night. And they might do of in the day some, I don't know
about
that.
Cain: But they don't seem to do that any more, either.
Black: No.
Cain: Are there ways in which you think
mountain folk are different from, say, people who live in
Asheville or on the Piedmont?
Black: Well, I don't know whether
there is a whole lot of difference or not. There might be some. Some people
don't like the mountains. They've always been used to living in more level
countries, and I think they prefer there than here. But there's more people
coming to the mountains, I hear.
Cain: That's changed. The other thing
is, there is a lot of stereotypes of people from the mountains, some
good and some real bad.
Black: Yes.
Cain: Burder Reeves' daughter Robin,
who works down at Mission Hospital, was telling me that almost every day people
would look at her who didn't know her, they would say, "Oh, you're from Madison
County. You're from the mountains. You must be dumb."
Black: Aw.
Cain: It's true.
Black: She didn't like that.
Cain: She didn't. Did you ever run into
prejudice because you were from the mountains, people looking down on you because of
where you are from?
Black: No, I don't think I have.
Cain: What did Frank do on the dam?
Black: He welded.
(pause for phone inside)
Black: She didn't like what she heard.
Cain: Right. Well and Betty's pretty sensitive
about that, too. She's a commissioner for Madison County.
Black: Is she?
Cain: Right. She said people are always
putting down the county as kind of backwards and full of hillbillies.
Black: Yeah, Madison County,
Cain. Yeah. Seemed pretty nice to me. If you
could choose to live anywhere, where would it be?
Black: (Laugh) Well I don't know much
about anywhere else. I guess I'll just stay here, somewhere
around and about anyway.
Cain: Okay. Sure. Do you get Social Security?
Black: Yes.
Cain: It helps?
Black: It helps. Yes.
Cain: Look at all the changes that are
taking place. I mean there are some changes like radio and television
and newspapers and telephones and paved roads and hospitals, good hospitals.
There also changes in people going away to work and having less time to be
neighborly.
Black: Yes.
Cain: What do you sense you've lost in these changes? What are people
losing?
Black: I don't know.
Cain: Well, you talked about
neighborliness, less time to sit and visit, less time to help each other out.
Black: Yes. Because everybody's gone to work, or whatever.
Cain: Are there things you've gotten
in place that you think are good, benefits of change? Well, you liked
your telephone.
Black: Yes. Back when I was growing
up, we didn't have any electricity. That's another big thing. We had to
use kerosene lamps.
Cain: You like being able to turn on a light?
Black: Yes. They had those oil lamps.
Then they got Aladdin lamps which gave more light. You've seen
them. Then later on we got the electric lamps. There's more things you can do
now that
you couldn't do back then. Didn't have electricity. Didn't have no
refrigerators.
Cain: There is the Sandy Mush that is the mountains, the beautiful
mountains. Nice fresh air.
Black: Yes.
Cain: People come out because they like that.
Black: Yes.
Cain: There's also the Sandy Mush
that's the people and the community. That's another part of Sandy Mush.
Black: Yes.
Cain: Is that being lost, the people?
Black: Lost?
Cain: Well, young people moving away.
The old people eventually passing. Is the community going to change
itself?
Black: I wouldn't think so.
Cain: Hope it goes on forever, eh?
Black: Yes.
Cain: Well, that's everything. It wasn't too hard, was it?
Black: No. (tape off, back on)
Cain: ... You like it that way.
Black: Yes.
Cain: I'm going down Friday. The first
Friday they have a potluck supper at the Community Center. You ever go down for that?
Black: No, I've not been. Didn't they have a supper down there a week or
so ago?
Cain: This Friday.
Black: Seems like somebody told me it last Friday. They was wrong then.
Cain: Ms. Cook,
one of the people who helps organize that and has a key to the Community Center. She says
its this Friday. I said I can't bring a dish to pass. She said she'd cook one
for me.
Black: It seems like what I heard was
that someone running for sheriff was having something down there.
Cain: That may have been.
Black: You know, last Friday. I guess this is a different thing.
Cain: You don't get out too much unless someone drives you?
Black: No. Oh, I go to the grocery store and K-Mart and around, when I
need to go.
Cain: Carl takes you?
Black: Yeah or my daughter. She's retired, too, from Bell South.
Cain: You said she lives over by Leicester High School.
Black; No, she doesn't live on that road. She lives beyond, past there.
Cain: Not too far, though.
Black: She can drive up in about 10 minutes.
Cain: I forgot whether I asked this. Does Carl have kids?
Black: One.
Cain: Are they here or gone?
Black: They're gone, (end)
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