Bluford and Lottie Surrett

Interview with Bluford Surrett, Lottie Surrett (wife), Louise Ball (daughter)

Leicester (Sandy Mush), N.C.

Conducted by Stephen Cain

Saturday, Aug. 8, 1998

(Tape 1, Side A)

Cain: I'm starting to tape it now. I'm sorry, you were telling me you were working on.

Bluford Surrett: Public works all the time. I worked on a contract out of Charlotte, just everywhere in there, whereever they had a job.

Cain: And what kind of work would you do with the contractor?

Bluford Surrett: Pipe work.

Cain: Welding too?

Bluford Surrett: No I didn't do no welding.

Cain: I guess my first question is, do you consider yourself a mountain man?

Bluford Surrett: Yes. Yes I do.

Cain: Is that a good thing to be?

Bluford Surrett: Yessir. It is. I used to coon hunt aright smart in these mountains.

Cain: And you grew up here.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: But then you worked outside.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: You came back.

Bluford Surrett: Oh yeah. Yeah. I've worked all over, from Wilmington, North Carolina, to Winston-Salem, Greensboro. I've worked all these towns. Where ever they'd take a job, that's where I went.

Cain: But they didn't have jobs here?

Bluford Surrett: Oh I worked about three years up here, (inaudible). I started up there when there wasn't a building up there.

Cain: But how long have you been back here on Hog Eye?

Bluford Surrett: Oh, I've been back here for, I just couldn't say how many years, several.

Cain: Go ahead, please. You can talk any time. (To Lottie Surrett and Louise Ball).

Louise Ball: Dad, how long did you work for the county? The state?

Bluford Surrett: Well I worked for the schools out here for about 12-15 year, I guess. Done plumbing and heating with them.

Cain: Did you always know you were coming back to Sandy Mush?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah, I always come back.

Lottie Surrett: His family always stayed on Sandy Mush.

Cain: And you still have pretty much of your family still in the area? I mean Louise and Bobby's in the area, and Bruce, and they have children.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah, Bobby has a boy and a girl. And you have how many? Four?

Lottie Surrett (Answering for Louise): Four living, and Pauline has how many?

Louise Ball: Pauline has two, two boys.

Cain: Did any of the grandchildren stay in the area, or did they go elsewhere?

Louise Ball: Most of them are around here about, but Bobby's got one down the eastern part of the state, and Pauline's, they're not around here.

Lottie Surrett: Pauline and her family are in Georgia.

Cain: I look at the census for Sandy Mush, and, for a lot of years, it would lose population. People would have big families, and there wasn't enough work on the farms, and there wasn't enough public work, and they'd move away. Now I guess newcomers, people like me, are moving back. But you still have a lot of family here.

Bluford Surrett: Now you take up here on Sugar Creek, up around the head. There's lots of newcomers come in up there. I don't know them.

Cain: But you go up Sandy Mush you've got Surrett Cove. Is that your family?

Bluford Surrett: Well, yeah. My father was raised up there.

Cain: What was his name?

Bluford Surrett: Tom Surrett. And my granddaddy lived up there, his (Tom's) father, raised his family up there.

Cain: When did the first Surretts come to Sandy Mush, do you think.

Bluford Surrett: I just wouldn't know. I heard back years ago that they, two or three of them came in here. One of them settled up there below Brevard along the road there, and my granddaddy come on up here and settled up here. And there are Surretts scattered all over the United States.

Cain: But coming up here would have been before the Civil War?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah, he was in the Civil War.

Cain: Which side?

Bluford Surrett: His was the South. And he got wounded in Tennessee. Got wounded down there. He come back here. He lived up here in the Sandy Mush. He died with that bullet still in his hip.

Cain: Did it make it hard for him to work?

Bluford Surrett: Well he done blacksmith work. He'd make these old wooden foot-scoop plows and stuff. He's make them and sell them to people, old wagon wheels and all that.

Cain: He'd put the steel bands on 'em?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah. Make the spokes and all that. He'd make all that. That old turning lathe and stuff.

Cain: And that was your grandfather.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: And, do you know what unit he was in in Tennessee?

Bluford Surrett: No I don't. I don't know what year he was there.

Cain: And what was your father's name?

Bluford Surrett: Tom, Tom Surrett was my father.

Cain: And did he farm?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah, he farmed some, and he worked some. Just whereever he could get it. There was a big family of us. We had an old, back when I was a kid, we had an old dog, good possum dog, treed. I'd possum hunt and catch enough possums where I could buy my shoes in the fall.

Cain: Did you also eat the possum?

Bluford Surrett: No. No.

Cain: Just for the fur.

Bluford Surrett: Just the fur. I wouldn't eat a possum. I used to coon hunt aright smart. People used to be crazy about eating coons, but not me.

Cain: I confess I've never had coon.

Bluford Surrett: I guess they're good if you're hungry enough.

Cain: I guess I'm partial to store-bought beef. Of course. I wouldn't mind it on the hoof either. That's what I like, plus what I can grow out of my garden.

Bluford Surrett: Was you raised on a farm?

Cain: No. I was, actually, I was raised in Tennessee, in Knoxville. My father was teaching at the university, and he was a forester and conservationist. So he laid out most of the trails in the Smokies that the CCC built.

Bluford Surrett: That oldest boy of ours, he was in the service for about four year, come out, stayed in the hospital for about a year then, and then he come out of that and went to work in the Federal Building. Worked there until he retired. He had about 31 or 32 years, I believe, with the government.

Cain: You had a lot of brothers and sisters?

Bluford Surrett: I have had. I ain't got no brothers much living even now.

Louise Ball: You got two brothers, Dad.

Bluford Surrett: I got two, I reckon.

Louise Ball: And one sister.

Cain: Are they still alive?

Louise Ball: They're alive. Several of them passed on.

Bluford Surrett: I've got a brother, oldest brother in the family. He's still living.

Cain: How old is he?

Bluford Surrett: He's about 97, I believe.

Cain: Where does he live?

Bluford Surrett: He's staying over here with his sister, Anne Freeman.

Louise Ball: Clark Cove. You know where that is?

Cain: Oh sure, I came by it. So they kind of help each other, your brother and sister?

Bluford Surrett: She takes care of him. She's the youngest one in the family.

Cain: That was getting me toward my next question, which was family and kin, and you kind of answered it already. But the question was, how important is family, is kinship, to mountain folk?

Bluford Surrett: How important? I don't know. I reckon our kinfolks, we all got along all right all the time.

Cain: You really kind of answered it, because families take care of each other.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: And it sounds like members of your family help care for each other.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: Is that the way it's been, Louise, pretty much?

Louise Ball: Well, Anne. She took George in, you know.

Bluford Surrett: I have a brother younger than I am. He's about 84 or 85. About 84, I believe, and this one over here (George) is about 97, I believe, 97 or 8.

Louise Ball: Dad said something to me this morning about carrying the mail. I don't know. He must have carried the mail years ago.

Cain: Who was the mail carrier?

Louise Ball: Did you say you carried the mail at one time, Dad?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah. I used to carry the mail on a horse down here at Odessa Post Office up to Garrett Cove. You know where the Garrett Cove is?

Cain: Right.

Bluford Surrett: They had a bunch of mail boxes all along the road there. I'd carry the mail there. I'd come back down to Brown's Dairy there and turn across, come out over on Willow Creek, go up'to the Gem Post Office on the head of Willow Creek, and back to this post office down here.

Cain: Now the Gem Post Office, they closed that a long time ago.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah. I'd go to it for the mail. I had a satchel with a lock on it, you know. I'd carry it. The people in the post office would open that.

Cain: Where was the post office down here that you picked up, that you started out at?

Bluford Surrett: Odessa, right down here at the Valley Church, used to be down there right by the creek, but the building is tore down now. Jess Ball run that, didn't he? (Note: Jones Valley Baptist Church).

Louise Ball: Yes.

Cain: Who did?

Bluford Surrett: Jess Ball.

Cain: How long has it been since there's been a post office here?

Bluford Surrett: Oh my, I don't know. There used to be a Gem Post Office. Sandy Mush Post Office. Odessa down here.

Cain: Can you spell that for me, Odessa? I didn't hear that too well.

Louise Ball: O-D-E-S-S-A.

Cain: Thank you. That's the same name as a place in Russia. I wonder how they got that name, Odessa, for here.

Bluford Surrett: I don't know. Well, they had one down here at Canto, the fork in the creek. You probably done found that, ain't you?

Cain: Right. Well, Don Reeves has a grocery store there now, and Canto is still on the map, but there's nothing on the ground to see. I drove out here the first time, I said, where's Canto?

Bluford Surrett: Granvilles was down there, used to run that.

Cain: That was before Reeves. But Don and his brother built that building. But there was another store that was there?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah. It was a big old building there.

Cain: When you were delivering the mail, about how old were you then?

Bluford Surrett: I guess in my late 20s.

Cain: And how long would it take you to make that round?

Bluford Surrett: About three hours if I rode pretty hard. I didn't have, now up there at the Garrett Cove, they had all their mail boxes, everybody that lived up in there had their mail boxes right there along the road. You put the mail in there. You didn't stop until you got up to the Gem Post Office, and you'd help them there and go back to Odessa.

Cain: What was your horse's name? Do you remember your horse's name?

Bluford Surrett: No I don't. I don't remember what their name's were.

Cain: Was it a good horse?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah. Wasn't a work horse. Was an old riding horse.

Cain: Well, you must have gotten to know everybody then, carrying their mail.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah, I knew lots of them back then. I carried it from Leicester out yonder to Canto up to Cross Rock, across Little Sandy Mountain, back to Sandy Mush here in a buggy.

Cain: That was a different time?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: You can't go across Cross Rock any more, can you?

Bluford Surrett: No, but I used to come across there with the buggy and the mail.

Cain: I was talking with Jim Hannah, and his father was the school teacher.

Bluford Surrett: Mont Hannah.

Cain: And he used to walk over to teach in Cross Rock for a couple of years before he started teaching in Sandy Mush. That was a couple of miles.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah. Then he taught down here at Liberty Hill, right down here where the Jones Valley Church is up on that, there was a school house up there. He taught down there, and he'd ride a horse from up here down there. And his oldest boy'd drive with him, went to school down there, George Hannah.

Lottie Surrett: I can still see him riding behind his daddy.

Cain: On the same horse?

Lottie Surrett: Yeah.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah, he'd be riding right up behind him. That old man taught school about all their life.

Louise Ball: He taught me.

Cain: What grade were you in when he was teaching you, Louise?

Louise Ball: Back then they would combine grades.

Bluford Surrett: I went to school down here. Old Miss Owens, they called her. She was a small woman.

Lottie Surrett: She could give you some hickory. She's stand on her tip toes, and she'd have a big old long hickory, and she'd cuff the blood out of you.

Cain: She ever take the hickory to you?

Lottie Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: What did you do to?

Lottie Surrett: I didn't do anything.

Louise Ball: Why did she whip you?

Lottie Surrett: We'd be out and she'd want to get us back in school.

Bluford Surrett: I played a pretty good one on her one time. I was down there next to the store above there.                                                    

Cain: That's where the Waldrop Store was:                                                                                                                                 

Bluford Surrett: No, Jess Ball's store there. And there is an old fellow there, he caught a ground squirrel down the road down there.  And I told him to give me that ground squirrel. He did. I held it around my neck and stuck it down my pockets and went up there and went into school after she took up books, you know. There was a boy sitting right in front of me asleep all the time. And there was another one sitting here with me. I told him, take ahold of his britches. I'd stick the ground squirrel. And I started to turn it up his leg, and he whirled and went right straight toward that schoolteacher. She hollered.

Cain: Did she know it was your fault? Did she know that was you?

Bluford Surrett: No. She didn't know who it was.

Cain: You didn't admit it was you?

Bluford Surrett: No. No sir. I wasn't about to do that.

Cain: About how old were you then?

Bluford Surrett: I guess I was 10 or 12 years old. (interruption)

Cain: Let's see if this (tape) is working all right. It seems to be.

Bluford Surrett: I went to school down there with four or five different teachers. Ben Hall taught down there. Old Miss Owens taught. And old Miss Anthony. I went to school with all of them.

Cain: How come teachers are always Old Miss this or Old Miss that? Were they all that old or where they just older than you were?

Bluford Surrett: They was older than I was. But Old Miss Anthony, she wasn't too old. She married a Brown. They run a feed store down on Lexington Avenue in town a long time. I seen her lots of times.

Cain: You were born in 1904. I understand in 1916, which would put you about 12 years old, there was a pretty good flood out here. Do you remember that?

Bluford Surrett: That flood they had here, washed that old mill away down there.

Cain: They had another one in 1977, which was about 22 years ago.

Lottie Surrett: It washed the church away down there.

Bluford Surrett: Yes, washed the church away down there.

Cain: And I think there was a mill there too.

Lottie Surrett: Yeah, there was a mill there. The first one was where the mill was. The first flood you were talking about might have been the mill.

Bluford Surrett: That's where the Post Office used to be.

Louise Ball: Dad, when was the mill washed out?

Bluford Surrett: About the time, they tore it out after the church washed away.

Louise Ball: Was that the time the Valley washed away?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Lottie Surrett: ... washed away.

Cain: Welt there may have been an earlier mill, too.

Bluford Surrett: An old corn mill. My daddy used to run on over there where the Waldrop Store used to be, right out the other side.

Cain: That was a water mill, was that run by water or by engine?

Bluford Surrett: Had a motor to pull a mill.

Cain: And did he grind corn or.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: Someone would bring their corn. They wouldn't pay money for it (the grinding).

Bluford Surrett: They'd toll it. Take eight pound out of a bushel.

Cain: How many pounds would a bushel weigh?

Bluford Surrett: Fifty-six pounds, I believe, 56 or 58, that was a bushel of corn.

Cain: It was about a seventh, about one-seventh of the corn?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: He'd do it by weight?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah. No, he had a little box. He dipped in it when it poured up in there. He'd dip out his toll, you know. If it was a bushel, he'd get that little box full. If there wasn't a bushel, he didn't get it full.

Cain: Did you ever take corn there to be ground?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah. Yeah.

Cain: What did you like to eat most?

Bluford Surrett: Well, I like my cornbread yet.

Cain: Who makes the best cornbread?

Bluford Surrett: Well, that's your ground. I count on the mills the best I can get, better than. You take this (packaged meal) that's got everything else in it, self rising. It's good meal, but I like it.

Cain: You like it home ground.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: A lot has been written about mountain families, and usually the stuff that's written portrays the man as the patriarch, the big boss. I was wondering if that was true or if it was more equal between the men and the women.

Bluford Surrett: I don't believe I know.

Cain: That's a diplomatic answer.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah (laugh).

Cain: Tell me about your old homeplace.

Bluford Surrett: About up here?

Cain: That's where you were brought up?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah, right up here, where this double-wide trailer is setting up there along the road. They used to have a house there.

Cain: It's gone now?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: Was it frame house or log?

Bluford Surrett: Framed house.

Cain: Do you recall when it was built?

Louise: You had a house right below the road where the trailer.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah, that old one below the road there back, I don't know, it was an old huge log house.

Cain: That was where you were a child?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: Was that two-story or one-story and a loft?

Bluford Surrett: I believe it was just one story. My grandmother, she stayed there. In fact, it was her place, and my daddy married her daughter.

Cain: How many of you were in that house at one time living there?

Lottie Surrett: About 11. It was his family.

Cain: So there were about 11 people in there.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: And there were two rooms and a cookhouse?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Lottie Surrett: Is that where you went out of the living room and went outside to go to the kitchen? (yes).

(Another woman, Bluford and Lottie Surrett's daughter-in-law enters the living room. I introduce myself, explain I'm doing an interview, and invite her to sit down).

Daughter-in-law: I'm just the daughter-in-law from next door. Guess what we got today, Pop?

Bluford Surrett: Bread and milk.

Daughter-in-law: Taxes.

Bluford Surrett: Taxes?

Daughter-in-law: Yeah. Buncombe County tax collector.

Cain: That means I'm going to get mine, too.

Daughter-in-law: If you live in Buncombe County, you probably will.

Cain: Well, I've got property here. They will sent it to my home, though, so my wife will see it before I do.

Louise Ball: I'll probably go hide mine.

Cain: Has it been going up a lot, taxes?

Bluford Surrett: I guess they're up there right smart, I don't know.

Cain: Are the taxes hard for people?

Louise Ball: Well I think when they reevaluate it, they up it, like they say, the market price. If you farm, you might (get a break).

Bluford Surrett: We've got a little old place over here on Sugar Creek, too. Taxes there and here, too (long pause while he opens the tax bill, studies it, passes it to me).

Cain: Oh that's not too bad. Oh. All this does is say $17.

Bluford Surrett: That ain't the property tax.

Cain: If I could get by with $17 in taxes, I'd like paying taxes.

Louise Ball: That must be something else.

Cain: We were talking about the homeplace, and, did that get tore down, or is that still standing?

Bluford Surrett: Which? The house up there?

Cain: The log cabin that you were raised in.

Bluford Surrett: That's tore down.

Lottie Surrett: That's been tore down long time ago. It did have an upstairs in it.

Cain: For sleeping?

Lottie Surrett: Well some slept downstairs. Had one big room downstairs.

Cain: In the big room downstairs, it had a fireplace.

Lottie Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: Did they do the cooking in the fireplace or did they.

Lottie Surrett: They had a kitchen out back.

Cain: Oh, that's right. I forgot.

Bluford Surrett: The heating was from the fireplace.

Cain: If you were sleeping upstairs, it would get kind of cold at night sometimes?

Bluford Surrett: The heat would come up, and it would be warmer up there.

Cain: Than downstairs? I heard stories of the chinking wouldn't be too good, and sometimes it would snow and wind and it would, snow would blow through the cracks.

Bluford Surrett: That was them old board roofs. I made them boards, you know.

Cain: You did?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah, I made them. Lots of people used to make them and cover their house with them. And cracks in them

old Doards. Sun, you know, it would tear it up a little. The wind blow that snow through there.

Cain: So you'd wake up with some snow on your blanket?

Bluford Surrett: No, I never did. I don't reckon I ever did.

Cain: You were pretty lucky then, I guess. Do you go to church any more?

Bluford Surrett: Not now. I used to.

Cain: What church?

Bluford Surrett: Well, I didn't have no certain one. I just goes anywhere. Used to go down here at The Valley all the time. That washed away. I went down to the chapel a while (Payne's Chapel Methodist). And they quit having anything down there, and I just quit going to church anywhere.

Cain: How long has it been since they had services at Payne's Chapel.

Bluford Surrett: I don't know. There was an old man, he come out there and taught for a long time. Old man Caty (?) from out about Hendersonville somewheres. He didn't preach, but he just taught Bible. He was a pretty good old man, though, pretty well read, (pause in tape).

Cain: All right, this is still going. I heard something. Must have been the car outside. Do you remember barn raisings?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah, I've been at 'em.

Cain: Tell me a little about barn raisings.

Bluford Surrett: I helped raise one there, old man Maiden King. It was pine logs we built it out of. I notched one side of it and (inaudible) notched the other side of it, and we'd, I forget now. There were four corners and a man on each corner.

Cain: What kind of notches were you cutting?

Bluford Surrett: We cut a flat notch. You can cut a square notch, but we cut a flat notch on that.

Cain. That's a little easier than those half-dovetails.

Bluford Surrett. Yeah.

Cain: How many of you would work on that barn.

Bluford Surrett: I don't know how many. They had to raise the logs. There was several of them there. Roll them log up them poles to the top. I don't know. That old log barn still might be a standing. I don't know whether it is or not.

Cain: About how long ago was that?

Bluford Surrett: That's been, oh Lord, I don't know. I guess that's been 25-30 years ago or longer.

Cain: Last one I heard about was when Rev. Bill Gillespie's barn got hit by lightning on a Sunday three or four years ago, I guess. Folks from all over came and helped put up some new barns, but other than that, it seems like it has been quite a long time since people got together for barn raisings.

Bluford Surrett: Yes, it has. It used to.

Cain: Why don't they do that any more?

Bluford Surrett: I don't know. Used to. Down here at this church, if anybody died around in the community, they'd go down there and ring that bell right smart. Had a big bell up there, you know, ropes down to ring it. And then they rung it a while. They'd tone it. Had a rope, they would jerk and hit that bell just one time. Every few minutes they'd do that. People around the zommunity would know that somebody was dead. They'd all go and dig graves and help.

Cain: You helped dig graves?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah, I helped dig right there.

Cain: How about corn shuckings?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah (laugh), I been to corn shuckings.

Cain: Tell me a little bit about that.

Bluford Surrett: They'd gather around and shuck a big pile of corn, big bunch come in, you know, and shuck a big bunch of orn. Shuck it out.

Cain: Would there be something in the middle of the pile?

Bluford Surrett: Well (laugh), no. They used to. I don't reckon they'd ever put anything in it, but they'd have a good dinner fixed. Always have a big.

Cain: 'cause I heard there used to be, like, a half-gallon of corn liquor and that, when all the shucking was done, you'd pass

that around and that was part of the reward. Was that true or was that more myth?

Lottie Surrett: That was true, I guess. They'd have to have that bottle.

Cain: I was talking with Keith Wells, who is a lot younger, just 50, I guess. The last one he was at, they had pop for the kids.

No jug for the little ones. But they don't do the corn shuckings either.

Bluford Surrett: No, not no more, no. Used to. When people died around there, they'd go on down there and dig their graves

and everything. There wasn't no funeral homes, hardly, then. The people around in the community would always build their

casket and dress them.

Cain: And put them down.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Louise Ball: Well, Dad, you were talking about tolling that bell. Didn't they toll it for every number of years they were, that

person that died. Did they toll it the number of years he was, or she?

Lottie Surrett: They did, if they knew, they tolled it that many times.

Cain: Mr. Surrett, what kinds of things do you value in another person? What kind of qualities do you look for in someone?

Bluford Surrett: Well, that's a hard question to answer. If you, yeah. You try to get along with everybody in the community, but

maybe some of 'em you couldn't do too good with. You just didn't have too much to do with them, just let them go on their own.

Cain: I understand that. But a person you admired, a person you thought a lot of, what kind of qualities would that person have?

Bluford Surrett: He's have a good quality. I'd like him, you know, do anything I could for him, maybe, help him any way I could.

Cain: So that kind of person would help you, too?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah. Yeah. I had an awful good friend who died here a while back. He worked right on up about two weeks till he died. He had cancer. They cut him open, and they just sewed him back up. He didn't live more than about three weeks. Me and him used to do plumbing together for the county and the schools, Buncombe County Schools.

Cain: But a person that you admired. I was looking for, what would that person be like? What kinds of things were important in another person?

Bluford Surrett: Well, he'd be an awfully kind person. He would do anything that he could for you. He'd help you.

Cain: One of the things I see a lot of in talking to people is a kind of a neighborliness. And part of it was the barn raising and the corn shucking, where people would get together and help each other out.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: And then there were just the personal things. You had a task, and somebody could come and help you with it. And that's a kind of neighborliness.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: Is that part of what you liked about Sandy Mush?

Bluford Surrett: Well, yeah, I liked that part of it. But they ain't as neighborly as they used to be. There are so many people moved in here, they won't allow you on their property or allow you to trespass about them, or anything.

Cain: But they come onto your property? Will they come on your property?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah, some of them do. I don't. I've got a few apple trees over yonder on that place, apples. Two times, we've had somebody just go in there and trim up the trees for the apples. I don't know who they were.

Cain: People aren't as neighborly as they used to be years ago?

Bluford Surrett: No. No, they aren't.

Cain: If you were looking at the kinds of changes that have taken place over the years, some have been good, I suspect. Some haven't been so good. What would be some of the good changes?

Bluford Surrett: Well, what would be good would be the good neighbor that way, but these people, I don't know. You can't say if they are good neighbors. I wouldn't say that, 'cause, they'll keep. Now these people moving on the upper end of Sugar Creek up here. They got a gate across the road, big sign, "No trespassing." They keep a lock on it. You can't go up in there. You can't go on their property. But they come down, they want you to patronize them as a neighbor or something. I can't.

Cain: So that's a change you don't like?

Bluford Surrett: I don't like it, no.

Cain: Do you remember when electricity came here?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah, I do. I don't remember the years, but I remember when it come in here.

Cain: Was that a good thing?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah. It was. We had them old lamps, you know.

Cain: Actually, I should ask you, Lottie. Did that make it easier when you got electricity?

Lottie Surrett: How was that?

Cain: When you got electricity, did that make your life easier?

Lottie Surrett: Yeah. A whole lot easier. We had an old scrub board.

Louise Ball: I can remember you working on the old scrub boards.

Cain: Well, it gave you muscles.

Lottie Surrett: It did that.

Cain: I guess I was lucky growing up. I had a washing machine and an iron that you could plug in.

Bluford Surrett: We had one set out on the porch, and she'd wash for a long time.

Lottie Surrett: An old scrub board. I've got that there board.

Cain: Just something to look at, not to use.

Lottie Surrett: No.

Bluford Surrett: Well, she's got one of them old wooden churns.

Lottie Surrett: We used to churn, make butter.

Cain: You made butter?

Lottie Surrett: Yeah. I had the prettiest yellow butter you ever seen, and I'd sell it down here at the country store, and he'd haul it over to Asheville. And them people over there found out the butter that I sold, and they'd hunt for it when it come in. They wanted what I sent into the store.

Cain: How long would you have to churn?

Lottie Surrett: Well, it would depend on how cold your milk was. If your milk was cold, it would take you maybe an hour or more where you could get the butter together and get it out of the milk.

Cain: And if it wasn't cold, if it was kind of warm?

Lottie Surrett: If it's warm, it churns quicker.

Louise Ball: You have to let it set until it gathers.

Cain: So how much butter would you make?

Lottie Surrett: I would make about two pound at a time, four big (inaudible).

Cain: How much milk would it take to make that much butter?

Lottie Surrett: I guess about five gallons.

Cain: Did you milk the cow, too?

Lottie Surrett: Yeah. I used to milk (inaudible) cows.

Cain: Did you ever get kicked?

Lottie Surrett: Well yes. I stay with 'em, though. I milk 'em. (laughter)

Cain: Show who's boss?

Lottie Surrett: Yes. I said I'd milk 'em, and I would. I had three cows at one time to milk.

Cain: Louise, did you do any of this?

Louise Ball: Yeah, I milked cows.

Cain: And churned?

Louise Ball: Yeah.

Cain: Go ahead, Bluford. You started to say?

Bluford Surrett: I started to say something, but I forgot what I.

Cain: That happens to me sometimes. Actually, quite a bit. (Bruce enters). Hi, Bruce. How are you? I'm Steve Cain.

Bruce Surrett: Nice to meet you.

Cain: Got your paper, (tape end)

(Tape 1, SideB)

Cain: Louise, tell me a little bit about growing up here?

Louise Ball: The school buses didn't run up the road (Hog Eye). You walked out to the main road to catch the school bus.

Cain: So you had to go to school in Leicester, then?

Louise Ball: No. We went to Sandy Mush. We used to live back up in the hollow up here. Right back here. We'd either come down this way and go out to the main road down here or we'd go on across to Sugar Creek, (lengthy inaudible section).

Cain: Did you ever live anywhere other than Sandy Mush?

Louise Ball: No.

Cain: Did you ever want to live anywhere else.

Louise Ball: No, I don't believe I do.

Cain: What do you like about it?

Louise: It was where I was raised, what I call home. A lot of people we grew up with, we can always depend on if you ever leeded it. (More inaudible).

Cain: Well, it's beautiful, too.

Louise Ball: Very beautiful.

Cain: How about you, Lottie?

Lottie Surrett: I was raised over on Sugar Creek. Have you been over on that road?

Cain: I have.

Lottie Surrett: Have you? Well, over there was where I was raised, on Sugar Creek.

Cain: You ever wanted to live anywhere else?

Lottie Surrett: Well, I have lived other places.

Cain: Where?

Lottie Surrett: Well, we lived at Canton.

Cain: But you end up coming back here?

Lottie Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: In terms of, oh, I know what I wanted to ask. Sandy Mush used to have a reputation for being a pretty rough place.

Lottie Surrett: (general laughter) Yes, it had that name, I guess.

Cain: Was that deserved or undeserved?

Lottie Surrett: It got pretty rough at times.

Bluford Surrett: It's about the drinks, about all. That's about it.

Lottie Surrett: Have a fistfight or two.

Louise Ball: Did they ever have a fistfight or two?

Cain: Did they ever have a fistfight?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Lottie Surrett: Fist fighting. I've seen 'em get up and get fighting sometimes, and they'd get their shirts cut off 'em. They would! hey'd get the hide cut, too.

Bluford Surrett: There used to be a bunch stayed around here, drinking. They'd drink right smart. The law didn't bother them jne.

Cain: I didn't hear much about the law coming up here.

Bluford: No.

Louise Ball: They didn't have phones. They couldn't go call 'em.

Cain: So, you sort of took care of your own.

Louise Ball: Yeah.

Bluford Surrett: If they'd of had phones like they had now, they'd have been after them a little bit. No phones.

Cain: I was talking with Mabel Duckett down on Sandy Mush Creek. On their place right there on that cove, in going around,

they found places where there had been seven stills. Thought that was kind of a lot.

Lottie Surrett: I know of a place they'd make it in the house.

Cain: Really?

Lottie Surrett: Yeah. There's an old man live way back agin the mountain over yonder, and they used to make it in the house.

They had a little chimney fireplace.

Cain: That may have been kind of smarter, because, if you look out over the hill and you see that little smoke coming up at

night, on a clear night, you know what they are doing. I haven't heard of anybody doing it much lately.

Bluford Surrett: You don't see no whiskey around here now, hardly. All it is comes from the liquor store. What's made, you don't see none made around here now hardly. These people gone into marijuana.

Cain: [Section edited.]  And you see the helicopters coming really low.

Louise Ball: They were in here Monday night.

Bluford Surrett: They was up here the other day, all up this hollow.

Cain: The problem with that is they can take your land if they catch you.

Bluford Surrett: I don't know if they would. I guess they would if you was the one that was growing it. Take you on it. But I don't know. They grow it around. I believe there is plenty of it in this country now. I don't bother them. They don't bother me.

[Section edited.]

Bluford Surrett: Them helicopters, pretty bad fly over this section now, but I don't know. I don't think that they catch anything.

Lottie Surrett: Well, there was some just up the road here, and some of them went in there and got it.

Bluford Surrett: Well they went back over it the other day. I don't know whether they found anything or not.

Cain: The economy is good in terms of unemployment in the cities and so on, but there still isn't an awful lot of money up here. The tobacco did pretty good for a while, but it's unreliable.

Louise Ball: Blue mold, and this dry weather if you don't irrigate it.

Bluford Surrett: Tried to do away with tobacco. Now these farmers, lot of them that's just about their tax paying. It hurts them. I don't smoke. I used to smoke some, but I ain't smoked none in a long time. I don't think that would hurt me if I did smoke. It ain't none of their business.

Cain: I smoked for a long time, but it was hurting my lungs, so I quit. Kind of hard to quit because I liked it.

Bluford Surrett: I smoked. I got a pack of these old cigars. I was working and coming from work. I lit up one of them, and coming out Leicester Highway. It made me sick. I throwed that thing out, and I ain't smoked none since.

Cain: Probably helped you live a little longer.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah. I don't know. I never was a heavy smokers.

Cain: I heard, I pronounce Leicester "Lester." But I heard some people call it "Lie-cester" or "Lee-cester." It's an English name originally, so the English would pronounce it "Lester." Is there a difference between old families and newcomers as to how they say it.

Louise Ball: I really don't know. Everybody's got their own way of saying it.

Bluford Surrett: "Lee-cester" would be right, the way you spell it, wouldn't it?

Cain: Right. But the English would call it Lester. I had family in Massachusetts in a place that you call it "Wooster" but it was spelled "War-chester." English had their own way of saying things. You've seen changes over a long period of time.

Bluford Surrett: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Cain: Do you think, on the whole, things are getting better or not getting better.

Bluford Surrett: I don't think it's no better. I think times is getting worse instead of better. I'm not no politician, but I'm not in favor of bringing all them foreign countries in there. There ain't too much work here for the American people without bringing all them in here.

Cain: I know a number of farmers bring in the Mexican labor because they can't hire people local.

Bluford Surrett: See, you take all those foreign countries got people in there. All of them, if they worked, they'd take the work from American people right smart. I don't believe in that. That's my idea.

Cain: When you look at the future of Sandy Mush, for what it's going to be like for your grandchildren, you know, 10 years, 20 years from now. Do you think you'd recognize the Sandy Mush that it is going to be?

Bluford Surrett: Well, it ain't going to be like it is now. It will be different.

Louise Ball: It's different from when we grew up, and there weren't too many cars, you know, and the highways weren't here or the interstate highways.

Bluford Surrett: Most of these people, they move in here, they say they're from Florida or somewhere like that. They'll buy a piece of land. They don't tell you about it.

Cain: I just don't understand it.

Bluford Surrett: That's not neighbor. Now if people lived here, raised in here, they just went to each other any time, stuff like that, go on their place. But now, these people come in here. You can't get out of the road.

Lottie Bluford: The older people, years ago, they had farms. The new people (don't farm).

Cain: Some of the new people try and become part of the community.

Louise Ball: Yes, they do.

Cain: And some just stay off by themselves, and they aren't accepted.

Louise Ball: You don't know who all is around you.

Lottie Bluford: There aren't many of the old people left around that used to be here when I growed up.

Bluford Surrett: I had a brother that sold a place down here. He sold it to one man. Then after he sold it to him, they came in here and built four houses on it. That was down there this side of Mabel Duckett's, about this way. You see a house right up in a little hollow up from the road there, he sold that.

Cain: Was that Turners?

Bluford Surrett: No, that's, I don't know what their name's is. They come in here, bought that. Now Turners live back on this

way.

Cain: I haven't met them yet.

Bluford Surrett: Across that creek there. Cross that bridge. Ain't no guard rails on neither side nor nothing. Big house.

Cain: I have Larry Cook building me a big bridge, big tall bridge so, when the water comes next time, it doesn't wash away.

Bluford Surrett: He's going to build you a bridge?

Cain: Yep. He's doin' it now. It'll be about seven feet over the water, and there's also room - if it really floods - to go around it, too. But my wife had this nightmare of being up in the cove and a flood comes through and then she's stuck, and there sure is no other way out unless you wanted to walk over to Early's Mountain.

Bluford Surrett: She could go right around the hill around there, not far from Turners.

Cain: Of course, if a big flood comes, It's going to take their bridge, too.

Bluford Surrett: I don't know who those people is who lives down the other side of you. There's two families down there.

Cain: Well, there's a new family, the Geigers, that I met. Live in a brick (it's wood) house just down from me, and some new people are moving up Worley's Cove.

Bluford Surrett: That brick house down there, Ross Worley built that house. What's thir name, the Watches or something like that.

Louise Ball: I think Welches, if they haven't sold it. They used to.

Cain: I haven't moved in yet so I really don't know. I haven't moved in yet. I have a map with names on it.

Louise Ball; I think Welches or something like that. They have a hot house, or did have.

Cain: Yes. That's on the same side I'm on. I can see that. Okay, well, this is.

Lottie Surrett: Did you get any new information?

Cain: Well sure, and it's important. What I'm doing is I'm putting together all the different ways people look at it. And a lot of it is the same, kind of overlapped, so it lets you know that you are kind of on to something. If you had one person over here and one person over there, what do you know? But there is a lot of feeling among the people together, that, well, life is pretty hard but there were good things about. A lot of ways life is easier now, but a lot of things have been lost. And that's pretty much.

Bluford Surrett: Back here years ago, you couldn't make no money. That's a back when people have some whiskey around here, that's when times was rough.

Cain: You could still a little bit of whiskey, and you could afford to buy something nice. Of course, you could also afford to get drunk.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah (laugh).

Cain: And that sometimes wasn't too nice.

Lottie Surrett: One thing about the corn meal, when they ground the raw meal for their own, and had their own cows, made their own butter, had food on the table.

Cain: Pretty self-sufficient. And if there wasn't any money, people would help each other.

Bluford Surrett: And when one died, they'd all come in and help dig his grave and everything like that.

Cain: And now people just pay for things.

Louise Ball: It used to be when you didn't have a refrigerator, you had a spring box or spring house to keep your milk and butter in.

Cain: How long would your milk stay fresh in a spring box?

Louise Ball: Well, if it was cold water, it would keep pretty good. How long do you think, Mama?

Lottie Surrett: It would keep all day. It would stay over night. That water was almost as cold as a refrigerator was. I'd like to have that good old butter I used to churn here.

Cain: You're not up to churning anymore?

Lottie Surrett: No, not any more. Got rid of the cow.

Cain: Did you salt your butter, or did you have it unsalted?

Lottie Surrett: I salted it. I sold it. What we didn't use, I could sell five and six pounds of butter a week.

Cain: How much did you used to get for a pound?

Lottie Surrett: Usually you'd get about 50 cents. And that store keeper down here, that used to be down there, he said people found out the butter I sold, because they'd hunt for it over there in town. They liked it. It was good, pretty yellow firm butter.

Cain: You've still got some chickens?

Lottie Surrett: Got chickens, yeah.

Cain: For eggs or for meat or both.

Lottie Surrett: We have both.

Bluford Surrett: What we don't eat, what we don't use, we give 'em away if we have any extras.

Cain: Do you keep a garden? Do you have a garden?

Lottie Bluford: Yeah. We started one. We're making it, trying. Put out beans, planted Beans has not come up yet. I just planted them a few days ago.

Cain: What all do you grow?

Lottie Surrett: I grow beans, and we grow taters and corn, stuff like that. Tomatoes.

Bluford Surrett: Okra, taters.

Lottie Surrett: Okra too.

Cain: I never developed a taste for okra.

Lottie Surrett: You don't like it?

Cain: No.

Lottie Surrett: Well I do. I like it.

Cain: I like beans, well, green beans. Love tomatoes.

Lottie Surrett: Is there a lot of difference between where you came from and down here?

Cain: I know my neighbors because that is the kind of person I am, but a lot of people who live in the area that I live, they may not even know who lives next door to them. And that's too bad. Part of the reason I came here was for the mountains, because they are beautiful, but also for the people.

Lottie Surrett: The weather's nice, too, but in the wintertime, can get some snow on the road.

Cain: Are they pretty good about plowing the roads?

Lottie Surrett: Yeah.

Bluford Surrett: People around here used to help each other a lot, but these people who've moved in here, they have quit lots of that. There wasn't no funeral home. People done their own, make their own caskets.

Cain: Did you ever make caskets yourself?

Bluford Surrett: No, I never made none, but I helped dress a few people out.

Cain: Put their best clothes on?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah, but I don't like that. My daddy used to do a whole lot of that. Anybody around in the country, they'd call him, and he'd go dress them. First one I ever dressed, me and Palmer (Sp.?) Cook, this fellow lived out there in the fields, that old house. He died, and there wasn't nobody but me and Palmer Cook, we laid him out, dressed him. They wanted heavy underwear put on him and all that. We put that on him. And I helped dress old man Jim Woody over here one time. And they wanted wool socks. Back years ago, they used to knit them socks. They wanted them put on.

Cain: So he'd be warm in the ground?

Bluford Surrett: (Laugh) I guess. My mother used to knit our socks. Take four needles and knit a sock. Old spinning wheel. Did you ever see one of those?

Cain: I've seen 'em. I've never used them.

Bluford Surrett: She used that. She'd get that thing out, spin that thing, that yarn, them old cards, you know.

Cain: So you'd grow - "grow" - raise the sheep for the wool.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: Did you ever shear sheep?

Bluford Surrett: No. I never sheared. I've seen lots of them sheared, though.

Cain: Well, where'd she get her wool?

Bluford Surrett: Wool out of them sheep. She'd card that wool. Did you ever see a set of them cards?

Cain: I have. I've never seen them do it. (To Lottie) Did you ever do it.

Lottie Surrett: Yes, I have.

Cain: Making homespun, then.

Lottie Surrett: Yeah. My grandma done her work, all the time, on that spinning wheel. She'd make knit socks, men's socks.

Cain: Would she use, dye it colors?

Lottie Surrett: Yes, she'd color.

Cain: What would she use for the colors.

Lottie Surrett: She'd color them blue or brown or something like.

Cain: Where would she get the blue?

Lottie Surrett: I don't know where she bought it.

Cain: Store-bought color, otherwise it would wash out?

Lottie Surrett: I think after they got them colored they don't wash out.

Bluford Surrett: I believe I could knit a sock.

Cain: I couldn't. My wife is a pretty good knitter, but she'd never knit me a sock. She'd just say, go buy it in the store. She'd do Afgans and blankets.

Bluford Surrett: I believe I could knit a sock.

Cain: Who taught you to knit?

Bluford Surrett: My mother knit all the time. She made all our socks.

Cain: But she taught you to knit?

Bluford Surrett: She'd get after me for getting on her knitting. I'd knitted too tight, she'd say. I watched her rib a sock, you know. This rib around the top of the sock. I've seen her make that. She'd take two stitches off, and next time she'd take one, and the next time she'd take two. That would rib a sock, then gnawing it off at the toe, she'd maybe take two stitches off one round, and she'd keep on taking two until it run out to nothing.

Cain: Would she get after you if you weren't taking care of your socks.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah, if I got in her knitting. I knitted too tight.

Cain: Lottie, did you do quilting?

Lottie Bluford: No, I haven't done any for a while, but I have. My hands are getting so I can't do much (arthritis).

Louise Ball: Years ago, she could have done it.

Cain: Louise, did you pick that up, too? Do you still do any?

Louise Ball: I don't do any. I have. That used to be something people did in the winter. They'd have a quilting time. They used to use cotton in there, but they've gotten to using quilting batten now, which is a lot better.

Cain: I bought a quilting frame out of rock maple for my wife. It's got all those rollers, so you can go up to king sized bed.

Louise Ball: It stand on the floor?

Cain: Yeah, but it's on a frame so you can turn it upright and put it up against a wall or bring it out, like an artist's easel, but that means I got to, when I'm building my house, I've got to have a big room for her, because that's something she wants to do. I didn't know how much they do, people quilted any more.

Louise Ball: Well I don't know. Irene (Cook) up here quilts a good bit. I guess she told you that.

Cain: Yes, and she's got some real nice quilts on the beds. I guess it's time for me to wrap it off (tape off/back on)

Bluford Surrett: A bunch of little kids to raise up.

Cain: Why's that?

Bluford Surrett: People got so mean, much meanness. Used to. We never locked our doors or nothing. But now, we keep our doors locked ever night.

Cain: You ever have someone come and steal something from you?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah, you better not leave stuff out now.

Cain: But have you ever had anything taken?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah, I've had some stuff gone. I had a box of fittings, galvanized fittings, three-quarter and half-inch, had a box just like a carpenter box, you know, had two sides to it. I had two pipe wrenches in it. Set back there on the kitchen porch. Someone got the box, wrenches and all.

Cain: That's awful. I wish I could live so I could leave my doors unlocked.

Bluford Surrett: I wish the times would be so you could, but you can't do that now. You don't know who's your friend and who aint. Just like that old boy they are after here in the Smokies.

Cain: Oh, yeah. Randolph.

Bluford Surrett: I hope they don't catch him because they'll kill him if they run up on him. I hope he stays away from them.

Cain: They say he did some pretty bad things, though. They say he blew up that clinic and killed a policeman.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah they say down there, but they never tried him. They don't know.

Cain: Well they can't try him until they catch him.

Bluford Surrett: Now, well. They don't know. To start with, it they was hunting him for a witness.

Cain: That's what they said.

Bluford Surrett: Now, they claim he done it. I don't know whether he did or not.

Cain: They got a million-dollar reward for him.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah, but I wouldn't turn him in for that. I wouldn't turn him in at all because I figure that was none of my business.

Cain: Well, I guess he has been over to Nantahala, did I pronounce that right, Nantaheela.

Bluford Surrett: I been down there.

Cain: Have you ever been up to Catalooch?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah. Been down to the mouth of Catalooch, Big Catalooch down there. That dam. I've been down there.

Cain: Fontana Dam?

Bluford Surrett: No, it's not Fontana Dam. Down on the Pigeon River, the mouth of Big Catalooch.

Cain: They evicted all the people to make way for the national park, the Smoky Mountain National Park. And I do know that the Hannahs came here from Catalooch.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: There's some Woodys over next cove over. Did they come from Catalooch too or did they come from somewhere else?

Bluford Surrett: I don't know. There are some Woodys over here on Sugar Creek. I don't know where they originally come from. I think they are originally from Spring Creek.

Cain: Where is Spring Creek from here?

Bluford Surrett: Have you been across Dogget?

Cain: No.

Bluford Surrett: You go down here to the forks, next to the fork. Take that road. It goes across and down Spring Creek ... you can get up on the hill and see the top of Dogget, but it's a pretty crooked road in through there, going up that mountain.

Lottie Surrett: Especially down the other side.

Bluford Surrett: You go down next to Hot Springs down there, Hot Springs Bluff in there, further up in there, too.

Cain: So that's up in Madison County?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah. That's all in Madison County. Yeah, they hunted for two old boys over there a long time for killing a state highway patrol. Was loose on that mountain over there. They never would have caught them if they'd acted right, but they just come out there selves.

Cain: We've been talking a long time (tape off/resumed). About this movie. What's the movie called?

Bluford Surrett: I don't know.

Louise Ball: "The Good Baby."

Cain: Do you know what kind of movie it is?

Louise Ball: I wasn't up here, but I think it was about a baby getting lost or something. Do you know what it was, Mama?

Lottie Surrett: I know it, but it doesn't come to my mind right now. A baby they take all around. Larry Cook is in on it, too.

Cain: He didn't tell me about that. Huh. Okay. Lance Holland. "A Good Baby."

Bluford Surrett: He made pictures of everything up through here.

Cain: Was he taking still pictures or moving pictures of you?

Bluford Surrett: I don't know. I was setting on the porch for them pictures ... they made pictures all of that hollow back through here, all this back through here. About all this branch up through here. He started down at the road, that bridge, made pictures of all of that through there.

Cain: I'll be interested to see it when it comes out, whether I recognize Sandy Mush.

Bluford Surrett: Well I guess you would.

Louise Ball: I think, Larry, they took a scene with him sawing up there at the saw mill.

Cain: He hasn't sawed that regularly, though, for a long time.

Louise Ball: No. Just for the picture, the film.

Cain: I know years ago there was a moonshine picture called "Thunder Road" that was shot in Buncombe, but I didn't know whether they shot it up here or not.

Louise Ball: Not right in here.

Cain: Oh, I know what I forgot to talk about. The nuclear waste dump that they wanted to build here. Do you remember that?

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: What did you think of that?

Bluford Surrett: Well, I didn't think, I don't know too much about it, except I druther it wouldn't be here.

Cain: How about you, Lottie?

Lottie Surrett: Well, whatever they get, I reckon.

Cain: They made a quilt of people were agin it. They wanted to dig a hole in the ground and bury it, it would be radioactive for 10,000 years, and got a lot of people upset, but I guess not everybody. Did you go to any of those meetings?

Lottie Surrett: No.

Bluford Surrett: I wouldn't want that in here. Ain't nothing I could do about it.

Cain: Well, lot of people protested, and that seemed to make a difference.

Bluford Surrett: Yeah.

Cain: Because Congress then took away the money for it.

Bluford Surrett: Well, I'm glad they didn't put it here. They might do it yet.

Cain: I suppose so. I don't think so, though.

Bluford Surrett: I heard some news reporter on the radio here a while back saying that Russia had a big bunch of bombs stole, nuclear bombs. You heard that, I guess?

Cain: The plutonium that they put in the bombs, they are missing a lot, and they don't know where it is. Could have been stolen, could have been lost, or just bad bookkeeping.

Bluford Surrett: I heard another man say, now they had it stored where they could hit the United States with it. Where they had it stored, I don't know.

Cain: I think we're probably pretty safe from that. I have other things that keep me up at night. Thank you.

Return to Top  Return to Sandy Mush Chronicles  Return to Oral History Collections