What was my Dad like when I was a child? He was the same when I was not a child. He was very consistent.
He was a product of growing up poor in the Appalachian Mountains. He, like his father, Sherman Owen,
had ridgid values and standards. He took a man's handshake or promise as valid as a written contract. He believed that a man's name and reputation was only as good as his word. He believed that hospitality was extremely important even to the extent of showing hospitality to an enemy. His attitude was to trust until he had reason not to. Sort of like fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, not very likely.
He subscribed to helping someone in need if you have the opportunity. He and I loafed (a southern tradition) often around the County. Oftentimes, we would see someone broken down. We changed tires, pulled people out of snow or ditches, gave rides, shared food, drink or gasoline and did what we could to help. I adopted that philosophy as my own and have only regretted it a couple of times over my lifetime. He stressed to me that I should be skeptical with people who displayed actions of being dishonest or inconsistent. He said to me "always be aware of what is real and what's not and know your enemies.
He stood tall at 6'3 or 6'4 and was a very strong man. He told me to not be afraid of hard work. Did he have shortcomings? Yes, everybody does. I guess one of his shortcomings was that he liked the taste of his product maybe a little too much. When he sold a bottle of whiskey, the buyer would take the cap off, smell the whiskey and then hand the bottle to my Dad. My Dad would take a drink and hand the bottle back. A few years later, I asked him about the ritual. He said it was sort of traditional. If a man won't take a drink of whiskey he is selling, the buyer has no confidence in the quality. After a good day of sales, my Dad wobbled a little when he walked. Sometimes he would take a drink and chase it with a drink of pickle juice. Try it, you will like it.
My brother Gerald, who until he was older thought his first name was Dammit, pulled a shitty on Dad. He kept a snuff glass about half full of whiskey in the refrigerator alongside a half glass of cold water. Well, we drank the water and replaced it with whiskey. My Dad came in after a hard day's work in the woods and took out the two glasses and downed them one after the other. Well, he could not get his breath and he stumbled around in the kitchen holding onto the table and stove to stay upright. Gerald and I vacated the premises at a fast pace.
We lived on 8 acres. Half in corn fields and half in mountain property. We harvested the corn and turned it into a liquid product called "moonshine" or just white likker. On the mountain property, he had several stills over the years and produced many gallons of top notch whiskey . He sold some wholesale in gallon Coke jugs. The rest he sold out of our house in half-pints, pints, quarts, and half-gallons. He grew up alongside Diamond Creek pretty far from civilization. He attended a one-room schoolhouse and finished the 5th grade. At that time high or higher school was 6th grade through 12th grade. By the way, I was born a young child and while I was young, my Dad worked in the woods either logging pulpwood or helping with his family business of making moonshine.
We mostly lived off the land. We had a vegetable garden which provided fresh vegetables in season and canned vegetables in the fall and winter. We walked the roads and picked polk salad. Not too many people know that Polk Salad is toxic. To make it edible, you cook it in water, rinse it off and cook it in a frying pan with some fatback or what is called side pork or salt pork along with some scrambled eggs. We raised our chickens both for eggs and eating. We hunted squirrels, rabbits and deer.
My Uncle Robert raised hogs. Every fall, we would go to Uncle Robert's and slaughter several hogs for the extended family. The huge hogs were called white russians and their bristles were long and sharp. We used a homemade block and tackle to raise the hogs in the air and then dunk them in a huge black pot of boiling water. then we would lay the hogs on a door and scrape the bristles and hair off. Then we would dunk them again and wash off the dirt that we did not get off when we scrapped. My Grandma and several other Grandmas would take the heads and make hogshead cheese complete with gristles. You can buy this product in delis today. (Not nearly as good but edible). The good thing about a sandwich of hogshead cheese was that you got your exercise chewing the gristles. My grandma would also make lye soap and lard from the hog fat. She cut the hog skins into pieces and fried them. She would put them in her cornbread and we called the bread cracklin bread.
We collected berries from all over, blueberries, blackberries, sugar berries , huckleberries, gooseberries, mulberries, and so on for jams and jellies. We picked grapes for jelly and jam and sometimes a good grape wine. We only went to the store for staples like flour, sugar and salt. I grew up eating grits and eggs, cornbread and biscuits and pinto beans. Sometimes someone would ask my Dad how many kids he had and he would take off his fedora hat, scratch his head and say: Well there's quite a few of them. When my Dad got too old to trapz the mountains and haul stills in and out, he hired my first cousin Willy B. to make whiskey for him. Willy was working the still when the revenuers raided the still. They handcuffed Willy B to a small sapling while they used axes and large hammers to wreck the still and furnace. Willy B. clumb (southern word) up the sapling until it bent over and he escaped. He came off the mountain into our backyard yelling Uncle Fred, Uncle Fred. My Dad got off the porch and asked Willy B, "what the hell are you making so much noise for? Of course Willy B. closed his eyes while my Dad took a double bladed ax and cut off the handcuffs. It took two or three weeks for us to get a new still in a different mountain stream and get a good whiskey mash going.
I remember Willy B telling about the time (years later) when he came into my Dad's stillplace and saw the muslim cloth over a mash barrel sunk douwn into the whiskey mash that he called beer mash. He said as he pulled out the cloth, out came a dead possum. Willy B said it appeared that the possum had drunk himself to death. I asked him if he dumped the mash and he looked at me as if I was crazy. He said he used the mash and roasted the possum. My Dad loved Willy B and I did too. Someone asked Willy B what the B stood for and he said no one ever told him. Willy B's Dad was my Uncle Avery who was killed in a knife fight over a poker game. According to what I have been told, the black poker players who sliced up my Uncle Avery sort of disappeared one by one.
My Dad always displayed a gruff exterior but he had a big heart and was a push over when someone gave him a sad story. I remember once we were down by the French Broad River at my brother Mike's house. My Dad had sold a cow to an old farmer on credit. My Dad had my sister Thelma call the guy up and when Dad took the phone, he told the guy that he could use the money for the cow. The old man told my Dad that the cow had died. My Dad held his hand over the earpiece of the phone and told us: "that son-of-a-bitch said that the cow died". He then put the phone back up to his ear and said: "well if the cow died, I guess it's ok then. When he hung up the phone we told him that he covered the wrong end of the phone and the guy heard what he said. He replied well I don't give a damn.
Hey somebody, we are out of paper here. Anyone, Toss me a corncob.
No comments:
Post a Comment