Seventh Son by Carl Owen

I was born a young child. No, I wasn’t a coal miner’s daughter. I was a moonshiner’s son.

It was a hot August day, the nineteenth, to be exact. The sun was about midway up its climb into the sky over the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, not too far from the Cherokee Indian reservation. The familiar blue haze was being displaced by the bright rays of the warm dog day’s sun.

To find the exact place, you would start in a well known tourist city of North Carolina. The city of Asheville and also the home of the famous Biltmore House and the Buncombe County jail as I was to find out in later years. You would take State highway 64 east and pass by the entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Cherokee Indian Reservation. About 30 miles from Asheville you would come to Brevard, North Carolina, now a popular retirement spot for out –of- towners from Florida and New York City. Brevard is also well known to artists and musicians as an up and coming sorta artsy fartsy place. A place where you can experience some of the finest musical and art events and still get to rub elbows with the natives, more commonly referred to as hillbillies.

About nine miles on up highway 64 you will find the small town of Rosman. You would stop in Rosman at the Company Store and have two famous chilly dogs and a pint of Sealtest chocolate milk for about 35 cents or so and pick up a nickel’s worth of penny candy from the display by the meat counter. Continuing up highway 64 about three miles you would come to a turnoff road proudly labeled Frozen Creek Road. Since you could only go left, you would go left unless you were my sister, Vonda Lee, who still has some difficulty telling her left from her right. Up Frozen Creek Road about a mile and before you get to Jim Dick Hill, you will see a small road leading to the left named Bothy Road. Please don’t ask me why someone named the driveway to my Daddy’s house Bothy Road. It didn’t even have a name when I was born. The first road to the left off Bothy leads directly into the yard of my Daddy, Fred Owen’s house.

So, roughly 45 miles from Ashville on Frozen Creek Road about ten o’clock in the morning on August 19, 1946, I was born in the living room of my Daddy’s house. Within 11 minutes of my birth, in a little town called Hope, Arkansas another young boy was born at home also. His name was William Jefferson Clinton. Despite sharing a birthday with this other young boy, I did not become President of The United States as he did. However I was elected a Union President twice much later. Now Union President has nothing to do with the Yankee Union Army. It’s a different thing entirely. But both Hillary and Anita can claim they slept with the President.

Well, everybody had been hanging around the house all day because my Mama had told everyone she was giving birth so she could get back to work. I remember one minute being all warm and sleepy and the next minute be held up in the air, my butt slapped, and wrapped in an old rough towel. The sun was coming through the window and I had trouble holding my eyes open. Mama, yelled at my sister Thelma to bring her a wash pan and some warm water. The next thing I knew, she was scrubbing me with a washcloth and everybody was gathering round saying, “I wanna see the baby.” I had never known such excitement. As I looked around the living room, I saw a gaggle of people who I later came to know as my family. They were talking about the new baby. I looked all over and did not see the baby they were talking about. I was still a little sleepy and also beginning to get a little hungry too.

Mama shooed everyone away and carried me out to the front porch. There was a little breeze and as she sat on the porch in the hot morning sun, I dozed off in her lap. I didn’t own any clothes then so I was still wrapped in the towel, but I was awful tired and a little confused about seeing so many people around. I must have slept for about an hour when Mama stood up and told my sister Thelma to come and hold me while she fixed something for dinner. You see, in some parts of the country folks eat dinner in the evening, but we ate supper in the evening so dinnertime was about high noon in our parts.

My sister, Thelma pulled up a wooden chair with a straw bottom and sat down in

it and Mama handed me off and went in the kitchen. Soon, she came out and brought a plate of soup beans and cornbread. Thelma held me while Mama fed me my first meal. I liked the soup beans o.k. but I found out later they make you fart. The corn bread was delicious but the onion and hot pepper seemed a little strong to me as well as a little crunchy on my new teeth.

Well, it wasn’t too long until my Grandma who lived across Frozen Creek Road heard that I had made my appearance and came to visit. I still remember looking out our drive and seeing her walking toward the house. She had her hair all tied up in a bun and had a blue flowery dress on with a white apron. She walked right up on the porch and told my sister Thelma who was holding me to let her hold the baby. When Thelma handed me over to her, I then realized that I was the baby that everyone was talking about.