JACK AND RUBY HUNT

TRANSCRIPT %u2013
[Compiled December, 2008]

Interviewee: JACK AND RUBY HUNT

Interviewers: JANET HOSHOUR, also present Kathryn Hamrick, Darlene Gravett and Libby Sarazen (daughter of Jack and Ruby)

Interview Date: AUGUST 20, 2008

Location: HUNT HOME, LATTIMORE, NC

Length: 117 MINUTES

JACK HUNT: This was a good day; I didn't put on my clothes, but that was still a good day. Then I have a better day; I feel pretty good. Every once in a while I have a real sharp day; I feel frisky. [laughter] That's my better days, best days. But I'm fine, I'm good. I guess most 86 year olds have a little problem.
KATHRYN HAMRICK: I didn't get to tell them about the cabin where you have the hog killings; that's been a lot of fun.
Jack H: It has been a lot of fun.
KH: I took pictures of the hog killing; do not open the pictures while you are eating. [laughter] I took pictures of every stage.
DARLENE GRAVETT: My husband, Ray, grew up on a farm in Kentucky.
Jack H: Did you have a tour at Fort Bragg?
DG No, we never did get there.
Jack H: I had 2 tours there.
DG: Did you? You were in the Army then?
Jack H: I was there during World War II and also the Korean War.
DG: Were you infantry?
Jack H: No.
JANET HOSHOUR: Well, Dr. Hunt, if you're ready, I'm ready to go. Can you tell me, were you born and raised here?
Jack H: Well not right here, but within 2 miles of here.
Janet H: What town?
Jack H: Lattimore, this is not Lattimore, this is the country. We do not live in the city.
Janet H: How many generations of your family have been here?
Jack H: Oh gosh, my mom grew up in the Beaver Dam community. And her great granddaddy is buried out there on Ridings Road. So her family has been here from the beginning of time; I don't know what that was. My dad grew up in the Duncan's Creek area. This doesn't mean anything to you, but out 226, from Polkville about 3-4 miles, that%u2019s Duncan's Creek. You cross Duncan's Creek and that general area is where he grew up. Dad was born in 1885, he played around a little bit, I understand, and including I think for some reason he went out West. I see Kathryn giggling; now most times when people in this area went West, there was some kind of trouble; that%u2019s the reason they went. He went out and worked in North Dakota about a year or two and decided he'd come back. He'd gone to school at Burns, the old Piedmont school up at Lawndale. He decided he was going to dental school and he went to Atlanta Dental School. He came back here in 1910 and started a dental practice in Lattimore. Lattimore in 1910, believe it or not, was the hottest little--sort of like Boiling Springs is now. It was a little hot spot because the railroads crossed here, Seaboard and Southern. So Lattimore other than Shelby and Kings Mountain was sort of a hot spot like Boiling Springs is now. They had 2 doctors and a dentist and several businesses, a bank, and so on. So he started a practice here and my mom worked in the post office. She had one of those first woman's lib jobs, I guess. The post office and dad's dental office was like this, the post office was here, and his dental office was up here. So he got to see her frequently and they ended up getting married. They married in 1910, really. And our family's been here ever since.
Janet H: I imagine dentistry has changed quite a bit since he was practicing.
Jack H: Dramatically. And even since I've quit practicing it%u2019s changed a lot.
Janet H: Did he farm as well?
Jack H: As a matter of fact, he--the roaring twenties came along; Kathryn would have been doing the Charleston. He decided then, he had had a good, nice, instead of profit making dental practice in that era. He decided that he would do another thing that he made more money doing and also he enjoyed doing, so he just quit practicing dentistry in 1926, I think, and did other things.
Janet H: Including farming?
Jack H: Including farming and a little real estate. The main store here, he had a partner; there were two people, Hunt and Hewitt. I was reading some letters--Libby brought them over here--that he had written to my oldest sister while she was at Meredith. Interesting historical letters, you ought to read some of them some time. I'll get off on those letters a little later if you want to; there's a movie there in those letters. My oldest sister, Burnette, and your mother-in-law [looking at Kathryn Hamrick] roomed together at Meredith. And there's references to that in some of her letters, even talking about Charles J.and all kinds of things; there's a lot of interesting reading. But anyhow, see I forgot where I was. That's one of my problems; I get off on those tangents.
LIBBY SARAZEN: She asked if he did any farming?
Jack H: Oh yeah, Dad was a fertilizer dealer and had a store there. Mr. Hewitt really ran the store mostly, and Dad did other things like fertilizer and ship mules in here. That was a big deal from Tennessee. Tennessee mules were sought after, and he used to ship harrows and Tennessee mules in here. People were proud of their mules in that era, and they paid huge prices for a team of mules for that era. Heard him talking about people buying a team of mules, not like Cline's doing now with those big horses he buys. They were paying $800 in that era when land was $50 an acre, so that was a big deal. He was Armour Fertilizer Company's largest fertilizer dealer, and he did tell me he used to go to Greensboro and Chicago; that was headquarters for Amour. Armour was in the big time fertilizer and meat business back then. He did tell me they offered him $10,000 to go to work for them which was a fortune then. And he still decided to stay here and do what he was doing. He told me one time that he had a bunch of money and he was selling fertilizer and they did what they called a chattel mortgage. They sell the fertilizer in the early spring to the farmers. I used to ride around with him when I was a little teeny boy and I heard a lot of this going on. He would get what they called a chattel mortgage on that farmer's mules, a Jersey cow, 2 gee whizzes, 1 turning plow and so on down the line and the cotton crop that was supposed to be harvested in the fall, and he was taking those chattel mortgages to the bank, First National still back then. They were in essence factoring those things; he let them have them at a discount. I don't remember what the discount was. Anyway they were making money. Of course, he was still responsible for them, so they had a pretty good lock on it. He decided then, he got adventuresome and decided he had enough money that he was going to carry it himself. And unfortunately 1929 came along and he went just nearly plum broke. Lost about 800 acres of land, maintained about 400, a tough time. And you can't talk to anybody about this depression. You just don't need to talk about it, cause nobody would believe it, the depression. You see some good documentaries; it was a tough time.
Janet H: What's a gee whiz?
Jack H: It's a type of plow; it's got little teeth. I don't know what they would call it now. It's got 3 to 6 little plows like my fingers and it would straddle the cotton rows here and plow it like that and keep the grass out of it. They had gee whizzes and bows; that was a plow shaped like this. They had a bull tongue that stuck down like this. Those were the 2 kind of plows that they cultivated the cotton with primarily. And of course they had a guano plow that they put the guano in, fertilizer. It was just a box and you'd put like 50 pounds of fertilizer in it and the mule pulled it. They had a planter, a cotton planter; it looks like just one of the planters on your husband's big old planters. They got the land ready to plant with a turning plow pulled by a mule, a single turning plow. Then they had a 2 horse plow, a bigger plow that 2 mules pulled. It turned the land over. They thought back then they had to do that. Now they don't even disturb the land with all the new practices. They turned the land, smoothed it up, laid off the rows, ran the fertilizer in the rows, and the cotton in the rows. The cotton came up; they really planted just a durn row of cotton to get a good stand. They went back with the hoe to thin the cotton; it was too thick. The practices have changed, unbelievable, since then. Cleveland County, I always thought it was an anomaly that Cleveland County was the largest or next to the largest cotton producing county in North Carolina. Here we are nearly in the mountains and we have to terrace our land; this is not really row crop country. We've sort of made it into that, but down East they've got these big 100 acre and 500 acre flat fields and that's sort of considered farming country. But here in Cleveland County, it was 85,000 acres of cotton and that's pretty accurate numbers. We usually were in a race, not a race but they used to write about who had the most cotton acreages planted. And I think it was Robeson County, Cleveland County, and Johnson County maybe. They were 3 big cotton counties. We were growing 85,000 acres of cotton in this county. Back then if you made a bale to the acre--and a bale to the acre means 500 pounds of lint cotton in a bale, baled up, compressed--that was considered outstanding. Now some of the cotton farmers make 2 bales or two and one half like that. This was all of my life from the time I come along in 1922. The teens and twenties were big, big cotton years and even later. The boll weevil came along and really wiped us out in 1945; that's close. But the boll weevil started down South and worked its way North. It wiped out the cotton country as it moved northward, and it got here, I think, in 1945. All of a sudden the boll weevil ate up the cotton crop and there wasn't any cotton. Now North Carolina has recovered, and they are boll weevil free by the good work of the Agricultural Department in the state. And now cotton is making some comeback in Cleveland County, mostly just to a few growers. But in my time everybody in Cleveland County was either producing cotton or living off the people who did produce cotton, even the school teachers. The school system rotated the attendance and the months rotated around the cotton crops. We had a split school session; I don't remember exactly the months. During the planting time, and the growing time of the cotton, I think, would be like April, maybe May, when they planted cotton, I think that's correct. The growing season when they thinned the cotton and used the gee whizzes and the bows and bull tongues and so forth to cultivate it. Long about, a few months later, they did what they called laid it by. That was the expression, we laid our cotton by, meaning it had grown and all it had to do now was grow more and the bolls to open up. And while that was happening, school started back. We went to school until the cotton started opening again. Of course the cotton started opening the middle or last of September. Some years the climate made a little difference and it still does. That was generally when the cotton opened, the middle of September, and during that period of time from September, October and part of November school was out again to pick the cotton because it was all picked by hand. Good cotton pickers--I never could understand it--some people could pick like 300 pounds of cotton a day. That was just the locks, seed and all; just put it in the sack. Most I ever picked was 163 pounds, and I thought I'd done real well. It took 1250 to 1300 pounds of cotton to make what we called a bale, put that on a wagon pulled by 2 mules. It took 1250 to 1300 pounds of cotton to make a 500-pound bale of lint when the seeds had been separated from it. I'm not sure how many cotton gins were in Cleveland County; I think it was on one side of 30. I know within a radius of 5 miles from here there were 2 cotton gins in Lattimore, one at New House, one at Mooresboro, one at Boiling Springs, Webb's where Max Hamrick is now, and Elliot%u2019s. Packard Elliot down where he lives his dad had a cotton gin; that's 7 just right here in a little clump. I think there were about 30 in Cleveland County. I remember in Lattimore there were 2 cotton gins, one Ruby's granddaddy had and one right here in the little village of Lattimore. One of them was right there at the railroad, behind the town hall, whatever that place is now. I can remember--I was telling Libby last night-- more than 50 wagons lined up to get their cotton ginned, maybe closer to 100 wagons. The little village was just crammed with wagons, waiting to get their cotton ginned. Of course they would get a bale of cotton, 700 pounds of seed--that was about what the yield was, out of that 1250 to 1300 pound, 525 or something like that. It was a way of life in Cleveland County. They started picking usually around the last of September, and the Cleveland County Fair started then about the same time it does now, the last part of September to first part of October. Everybody in school was hustling; that was about the time school turned out for cotton picking we called it, and people tried real hard to get a bale of cotton out so they could give their children a buck or two to go to the Fair. And I mean literally 50 cents or a dollar; course [during] the Depression it didn't get to be that much. The cotton here was like tobacco was down East. The merchants sort of had a bidding contest on who bought the first bale of cotton, and they always paid a premium for that first bale. If cotton was selling for 50 cents a pound, maybe they would pay a dollar a pound for the first bale. They used it as a promotion or an advertising gimmick; it always set out there about where the little Christmas House sits on the Court Square, would have FIRST BALE OF COTTON PRODUCED BY NATTIE FIFE, or whoever did it, BOUGHT BY FIRST NATIONAL BANK FOR A DOLLAR A POUND, or A V Wray & 6 Sons, or Cohen%u2019s or D. A. Beam or somebody. Cotton was king here. And now you'd really have to get someone more modern than I am to clue you in on how to grow cotton now. Max Hamrick, down here, is producing more cotton than probably 50 small farmers produced back then, and I don't think that's too far out of line. There's just half a dozen cotton producers in Cleveland County now; they've got big tractors and big machines that plant 6 rows at a time now. They farm with chemicals; that's an interesting subject to get into. That enough? [laughter] Janet H: Thank you. Can we talk about the tradition of hog butchering?
Jack H: Well, yes. That's a way of life as far back as I can remember, and much before I can remember. Also, along with that, the people who lived in Cleveland County in my early days and even before that, lived off what they produced on the farm. Kathryn had a little taste of that; we%u2019ve still got it in our blood. Betty helps us a lot, especially the corn.
RUBY HUNT: We have over 200 packs of corn in our freezer right now, and not quite that many peas, and green beans we have about, how many, Dad?
Jack H: 150
RH: We're scared we're going to starve. [laughter] Jack H: That's like, I was reading in the paper today about somebody, the Latter Day Saints. You read that article? The Church of the Latter Day Saints--one of their goals was for each person to have enough food to last a year, still is I think. We don't fall in that group of religious people, but we've got enough in our basement to live for a year or more.
RH: You all get hungry, come on [laughter] Jack H: Along with the hog, nearly every family, even including a few of the non farmers had a cow they could milk for milk. South Washington Street had cows.
KH: How about Marion Street?
Jack H: Marion Street is fairly new. I know South Washington, which was the old prominent families in Cleveland County lived on South Washington Street. But they had cows, and some of them had a hog or two in their backyard.
RH: And probably a few chickens.
Jack H: Hog was the perfect animal to preserve without refrigeration. So, because of that everybody had a hog. Some of them had 2 and a lot of them had 6 or 8, some of the bigger farmers. Course they slaughtered the hogs. One of the common phrases you heard, and I don't know if Libby remembers hearing this or not at the school, "Have you%u2019unses kilt yet?" [laughter] "Have you%u2019unses kilt yet?" Meaning, "Have you killed your hog this year?" So people shared when the fresh meat was; then they salted down a lot of the meat, salted the hams; most people salted the shoulders, the side meat, fat back. The side meat was what you would call bacon now. And the fat back was a big streak of fat only down the back. You could preserve it by putting salt on it. When they killed the hogs, it was an event, like I said "you%u2019unses kilt yet?" So when they killed the hog it was a big day. It was a toilsome day for the matron of the house, especially. The daddies and the boys go out and shoot the hog and bleed the hog, get the hair off the hog, take the entrails out of the hog and all that stuff. Then end up with the hog ready to dissect, far as preserving the meat, cut it up into shoulders and hams and fatback and so forth. They took out some of the fat meat to make lard. Put it in a black cast iron pot, built a fire around it, bubbles up and they get the lard. And they strain the leftovers from the fat meat and that's called cracklings. And they're delicious in corn bread, crackling corn bread. You don't believe they're good, but you just make some and you'll find out they are delicious in the cornbread. Then, of course, there's some fresh part of the hog that's harder to preserve unless it was cooked. Course you know, you eat ribs now, baby back ribs and all that stuff. You couldn't hardly preserve; some people did cook them and put them in big fruit jars. Most of the people ate the fresh ribs and fresh backbones, and made what Cleveland County is getting to be known as, made liver mush, which I remember beginning in Cleveland County. The first one I remember making it was a fellow named Bert Canipe. He lived in New House and had 4 big ole tall boys--lot of them worked for Kendall Medicine. I think one of them is still living, and he would be an interesting person to talk to about the history of liver mush. It was all centered around the little area about 5 miles up the road we call New House. And then the Jenkins family and the McKee family got into it. I think Mr. Bert got into it first; I think that's right but I wouldn't be dogmatic about that, but I think that's right. You could preserve the sausage, ground up sausage; of course you had fresh sausage. And my family and many families put in what they called poke sausage. I don't know where the word poke come from, cause they took worn-out bed sheets and made a little tube. Down East they put them in a casing; they put that sausage in the small intestine. This part of the country, I didn't know anybody that ever did that up here. We used worn-out bed sheets and made a little tube about that big and stuffed it with sausage. Some people put all kind of stuff on the outside, but I don't think any of that did a whole lot of good, maybe keep the skippers or something out of it. They hung it up in a smokehouse and it would sort of air dry.
RH: It had a different flavor.
Jack H: It had a distinctive flavor, but you developed a taste for it and loved it.
Janet H: You spent many, many years in the General Assembly
Jack H: I did. Not by long range plan, it just happened.
Janet H: I understand there's a pronounced connection between food and politics in your family. And I'm thinking about hearing there's a political impass that maybe Ruby's cooking helped.
Jack H: Not one, many. [laughter] Janet H: Could you folks talk about that a little bit?
Jack H: I didn't know we'd get into politics, but I guess that's all right. It's hard to talk politics without alienating people. Politicians are not a favorable word to a lot of people right now. Unfortunately, because it should be--a favorable word.
RH: As much impact they have on the way we live, everybody should be much more interested.
Jack H: I decided to run, to be a candidate to everybody's surprise, especially Ruby's
RH: I'm telling you, he hadn't said a word to me about it.
Jack H: We lived in a little mill village in Cliffside when we first got married. That's in the bottom tip of Rutherford County. Loved that little town, still do. Some of the finest people I've ever been around in my life live in Cliffside. Never had any regrets. Like Yogi Berra said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." I took several forks, like everybody else did. I'm not alone in that. I had people when I lived in Rutherford County, lived over there 4, 5, or 6 years. Back in those days there were groups of people that could, in essence, elect you to an office. That's no more. In that era it was, in Cleveland County and Rutherford County. And that little group in Rutherford County came to see me and talk to me about running for County Commissioner, which was tantamount to being elected. I told them I just didn't have time, that I had too many children and other things going, but I was flattered. We moved over to Lattimore because my dad had cancer and we wanted to be close to him. And we were fortunate enough to buy a house right across the street, a road more so than a street. After we'd been here 3, 4 or 5 years that same group of people in Cleveland County approached me about running for County Commissioner in Cleveland County, which again back in those days was sort of tantamount to being elected. So anyhow that was fleeting and I was flattered. Ruby said no one asked me to run for the legislature. About this time of year, couple months later than this, in 1971, I just decided that I was going to run for the legislature. I could get into a long story about that, but I won't; I'll skip that. Go back to this later if you want to. So I ran. Ruby said, "What you got on your mind?" I said, "Why you ask that?" She said, "Well you got something on your mind. I've been sleeping with you now a good many years." You don't want me to say anything else about that?
RH: No, No
Jack H: I always kid her a little bit about that. [laughter] I finally told her, %u201CWell, I'm thinking about running for the legislature.%u201D She like to jumped out of the bed.
RH: We had just moved into this house; that must have been about 39 years ago.
Jack H: That was December of 1971. We'd been in here about maybe 2 weeks, 3 weeks. And she was--, but anyhow--
RH: I thought I had my dream here, and I'd settle down here and be happy ever after.
Jack H. But anyhow, she finally joined up, and I went around to see certain people like you do. It was still a little carry over to what I was talking about then. It's changed so much, as Kathryn knows. Everybody was shocked; I had a dental practice, a small group of stores, farming, doing a lot of things.
RH: We had 3 or 4 children in college at that time.
Jack H: I had some resort property, commercial--very busy. Everybody was "you're kidding, are you really going to run?" But I had great support and $680 or something like that campaign money. Different big time, different. People running now have to have about 20 people to give them $4000, plus others. I won, fortunately. Matter of fact I led the 3-member ticket; sounds a little boastful, but that's right. Ruby decided, she made a statement. We got right much press, fortunately for that era. One of the pictures was us sitting around this table here, and one of her quotes was that she was not interested much in politics. She was certainly not a show dog, but she was going to support me and make me a home away from home, and she did that.
RH: One of the reasons I did want to go was because 3 or 4 of the children were in school in the Raleigh area, Chapel Hill and Meredith, and Penny might have been at Peace; I can't remember. Anyway that's the reason I wanted to go; everybody was in college but Sally, and I left Sally with my sister, Naomi, for one year. Course we came home every weekend, every weekend.
Jack H: She certainly did make us a home away from home, and that made it a lot easier for me. She was one of the few wives who stayed in Raleigh year round with her husband. We still remember a few of those women; there were just a few of them. Talked to one this week, offered her some tickets for the ball game. They had a good time. And Mildred Huskins, who was the wife of Jay Huskins, who was the owner and editor of the Statesville Record and Landmark . . . Mildred took Ruby in. Jay is the Huskins bill you read about, that education bill. That was Ruby's buddy's husband and a great supporter for me in my era. Anyhow, we stayed a long time.
RH: Tell them about the food.
Jack H: On yeah, the food. There was a guy down there named, what's his name, Ruby? Your boyfriend, one of your boyfriends.
RH: I was going to say, which one? [laughter] Are you talking about the fellow that runs the little newspaper?
Jack H: No, no. Not Bob, not him. I need to show some of those newspapers to Kathryn. Your best boyfriend.
RH: My best boyfriend was D. G. Martin.
Jack H: D. G. Martin was Dick Spangler's vice president; I don't know what his title was, but he was vice president of something. But his main job was liaison for the legislature. Have you ever heard of D. G.?
Janet H: No, I haven't.
RH: He's so cute, you ought to know him.
Jack H: Anyhow he edged up to me one day and said, "You%u2019ve been down here in Raleigh now several years. Where's the best place around Raleigh where you can get some good country food?" And he tells this story and says, "and Jack paused a minute and he said well the best place would be at Ruby's cooking." And he literally took us up, and I would say D.G ate Ruby's cooking several hundred times, not 50 times but several hundred times.
RH: He lives down in Raleigh, but he's been here and eaten several times.
Jack H: Anyhow, Ruby's cooking, she started it. She blames me now, but she is the one who started it. The normal legislative session usually starts about 1:30; that's been historical, and she'd call up to my office about 12 o%u2019clock or something like that and say, "Well I'm going to have cornbread and black-eyed peas and so and so tonight, so if you want to ask a couple of your buddies to come on out and eat that should be fine." So I did. It got to be, this maybe sounds boastful, but it's certainly the truth. It got to be if I said, "Ruby's cooking,%u201D they%u2019d change their plans, including Jim Hunt. Forty times he changed his plans to come to Ruby's cooking, and I'm not exaggerating. Call his office, Judy would. Judy was down there then too. Call his office and say "Ruby's cooking" and Jim Hunt's person would say, %u201CWell, you know, I'm sorry; he can't come because he's got such and such going on." We always knew he'd come. I bet he called 50 times at least and said, "I guess I'm still invited." It was a quarter after 7 then, and we'd started to eat. Anyhow, it got to be a real popular place for Ruby to cook. We enjoyed it. One night we got out the little telephone books, everybody had one, all the members of the house and senate. Gave their home address, their nicknames, their wives%u2019 names and so on. We went through those books and we could verify that there were over 500 different people that had eaten at Ruby's cooking.
RH: But we were there 22 years.
Background voice: She wants to know about Dick Spangler.
Jack H: That was a little different. We sort of had an understanding, cause we invited ----to Ruby's cooking it was pretty much a mixed bag, even some Republicans mixed in with it. [laughter] RH: We have good friends who are Republicans.
Jack H: We had 2 or 3 people in the press that we liked, including one who's still there, Jack Betts; he was one of our good regulars, still is now. And Rob Christensen who just wrote a very interesting book if you want to read it. Anyhow several of the media type people. But we had an understanding sort of like Las Vegas you know, they advertise what happens in Las Vegas stays here. We didn't get into a lot of--, I'm not saying it didn't go on now, cause there were a lot of things--, fixed might not be the right word, trading, progress was made at some of those things. This one that you all are talking about, though, was not one of our night times; it was a planned get together for Dick Spangler, who was president of the university system. And I can tell you a few little stories about Dick; I'll skip them right now though. And Jim Hunt, who was the governor and as far as I'm concerned will always be the governor; he was governor forever, you know. But they were having a little disagreement, and it got to be pretty thick, regarding the University of North Carolina. I decided that I would get them together in a private situation, no media. So I called both of them, and both of them nearly bit my head off. Course they were real close friends of ours, both of them, very close. But when I said, "I'm going to call Jim Hunt," Dick said, "Hell, no!" That was very expressive for him to say something like that. Jim Hunt was the same way, I told him, "I'll call Dick, and you all can come over here and get together for breakfast, just the two of you." Anyhow it gets too long, but eventually it worked, and they both agreed to it. And I'm of the strong opinion--I don't have it documented--but I'm pretty sure Bill Friday made it happen. I believe that pretty strong. They finally came and ate breakfast, and we had a good one of those hog breakfasts like Kathryn's had a good many of.
RH: Five or six meats.
Jack H: We had sausage and ham and bacon and liver mush and eggs and grits and biscuits and molasses and all that kind of good stuff. Typical Cleveland County breakfast.
RH: But the thing was, Dad, I think you should tell, they both wanted the same thing.
Jack H: But Kathryn can imagine me doing this. We finally get them there together and I made the statement, I said, "You fellows are acting like little boys, puffed up at each other, both of you acting like--. Jim Hunt, you're the greatest governor North Carolina has ever had and Dick Spangler, you're president of the university system; both of you are just passionate about education. And I know that and you both know that, and you all ought to have your butts kicked." I talked to them real plain, don't remember the exact words, and I left them alone, and they got their business settled. We've got a good article that, what%u2019s the Greensboro--?
RH: Ned Klein
Jack H: Ned Klein. Where he came by my office one day later and he said, "Tell me about that meeting you had out there with Jim Hunt and Dick Spangler." I said, "What are you talking about; I don't know what you're talking about." He said, "Come on now, don't try and pull the wool over me; I know you too good." So he started telling me about it, and so I told him I'd answer some of his questions, and he wrote a nice article about it and described it pretty good. So that's that story. But we had a lot of others, lot of others. Now that's enough, that's more than you asked for, wasn't it? [laughter] RH: Back to farming; tell her about going to FFA Camp.
Jack H: Did your boys go to FFA Camp? [looking at Kathryn] KH: Yes, at White Lake.
Jack H: Well, the curriculum at the high schools back then was very limited in the country schools. As I recall, you had to have 16 units to graduate, and you didn't have much choice to get to 16 units. The only choice I think here was to take French or you could take agriculture. I took both; I don't know why in the world I took French, cause I had a heck of a time passing it. But I took agriculture; I sort of wanted to take it, and I also wanted to go to FFA Camp.
RH: I think that was the main reason.
Jack H: I'm talking about 1937 or 38 and I was 14 years old, something like that. They had a program at FFA Camp then; there was two means of going as far as cost. One was if you wanted to take a certain list of foods, you could go for--I'm going to guess a little bit here--you could go for six dollars if you carried the food. If you didn't carry the food, it cost like twelve; that would be pretty close numbers. They gave you a list of foods you could take that would qualify; it was eggs, pork, ham, side meat, roasting ears and so on, chickens, live chickens and a list of, you know, tomatoes, all kind of things. They could swap around and 2 people could go for $12 and could swap food back and forth. Some of them would carry 2 chickens. We got on the back of a 16-foot flat bed truck, like Kathryn had on her farm, put side planks on it. Could get like 20-25 boys, 14, 15, 16 year olds; we had bales of hay or something to sit on around the outside edge a little bit, a couple of chicken coops with chickens in them and all that food. Boys had that farmer's tan; you know what that is? I don't know what they call that in California.
Janet H: A farmer's tan. [laughter] Jack H: They're conspicuous on the beach, too. Anyhow, get on the back of that truck. People like my daddy who had a truck like that would get the agriculture teacher to drive the truck, 25 boys on the back of it, all people down there with the chickens and everything and their little white legs, off to FFA Camp for a week. We looked forward to that because most of us had never been out of Cleveland County much if any and that's true. We always had one day then when we went on down to see the ocean.
RH: Most of those kids had never been to the ocean.
Jack H: Had never been to the ocean. It was really a fun event; we had little screened-in places to sleep like this, a mess hall, and had a little prescribed daily routine, intramural activities. Right straight across White Lake were the commercial beaches, Goldston Beach and another one. They had a little bit of activity over there, maybe a couple of rides, a jukebox; you know activities like that. After supper, the days were still long; we always had a salesman or two try to get a few dimes and that's really right, dimes, so we could buy a little gas for the truck and go over to Goldston%u2019s Beach and see the girls.
RH: Is that where you met the little girl with the sail boat?
Jack H: That's exactly right.
Janet H: Were you doing the shag?
Jack H: No, doing the jitterbug and the Big Apple; the shag was a little later. Yeah, I met a cute little old girl over there. Now what else? Since you mentioned that, I fell in love--she made like she did too--with her in the summer of '42.
RH: White Lake was before that.
Jack H: We both dated many people. I knew she was my girlfriend and was going to try and marry her. I dated 40 girls, a lot of girls, and she did the same thing.
RH: We were born within 300 yards of each other, right up this way. But I was 3 1/2 years younger than him, and he had started school when he was 5, so he was out of high school when I got there. So he hadn't paid me much attention. He went to Wake Forest, and he came home in the summer of '42, and he saw me one day and thought I had grown up.
Jack H: She was not that little girl I used to pat on the head like that. I knew I wanted her for a wife, and I think she finally decided she'd take me.
RH: Finally decide--I knew! I had some questions later on. [laughter] Jack H: She sorta likes that phrase that Ruth Graham said about Billy. Somebody asked her, "Mrs. Graham, did you ever think about divorce?" And her answer was, "No, but I sure did think about murder." [laughter] Janet H: That's great. Well going to pick up on the--it sounded like quite a social life. So I wonder, what were the social centers here in this county when you were teenagers? Did you go to dances?
Jack H: Well, really and truly, the churches were the main social. Kathryn, was that --you're much later of course. When we were coming along, BYPU, Baptist Young People's Union.
RH: Then after you went to BYPU, if the boy had a car, he took you to Shelby, and you went to Messicks or somewhere and got a coke with cherry in it or coke with lemon in it and then you came home.
LIBBY SARAZEN: Well, Daddy, you told me about Dortona Beach.
Jack H: Well, I had a pre-girl friend before Ruby. She's not involved in this; she happened to be a Crowder, too. Dortona Beach was the genesis of North Lake Country Club; it started as Dortona Beach. Dr. J. S. Dorton, who was a veterinarian--who to my knowledge I don't think ever practiced; he was a promoter. He made a little beach out there. Bought some land out there in the north parts where it is and had a little playground out there, and he called it Dortona Beach. A little lake and a pavilion for kids to go play and it eventually evolved into North Lake Country Club. Dr. Dorton was also the person that made the Cleveland County Fair be, I understand, the best county fair in the nation. And Dr. Dorton was the originator, the one that made it happen. He sold stock to people like my dad and others. I think my dad bought 5 shares; we still get 5 tickets. That's all the dividend that's ever come from it. Those shares were sold for $20 each. Lattimore used to have its own little fair, 'til they got the county fair. Lattimore was sort of a booming little spot. Dr. Dorton didn't leave here, but he also started doing the state fair, and he was the director of the state fair for many years. Then he started one in Charlotte that flew a little while; then it quit flying. But he was a promoter.
Janet H: One last thing I wanted to ask you about is your farming now. How many acres are you farming and what are you growing?
Jack H: I grow cows and trees. I started to say that's a lazy man's farming. We have some cattle and we have 100 or so acres of pine trees. That and grass and cows and hay is what we do now on the farm. Every inch of this farm used to be in cotton. And cotton, the farming practices were horrendous back then. A lot of people did not take care of the land. And the land was heavily eroded and washed all around. This farm had gullies all over it; big gullies that you could drop automobiles in. Over the years had just been eroded and eroded and eroded. Right here in front of this house was a house down there at the spring. Somebody always lived there, of course, a tenant farm; I need to tell you about that too, made me think of it. People had a road down there, and the road would get bad and they'd move over and make another road and then move over away from the gullies and make another one. And over a period of time those gullies got so you could have hidden a dozen cars in those gullies. And over here now it's got that pretty green grass growing on it. So I'm real proud of that. We did reclaim a lot of this land, made a farm out of it.
RH: Three of the farms we bought, little farms, had those same gullies; you worked on all of them.
Jack H: Yup. Some of this land was absentee owned and just rented to Roy Cochran, you know people like that. Raped the land %u2018cause it wasn't theirs; they just were gonna make a crop. So we worked on it. It looks pretty good now. But the tenant farmers, that's part of the cotton story. As I've said the boll weevil started down South and worked its way North. And when it got into Georgia, Georgia was a pretty good size cotton producing state. It sort of wiped out the cotton farmers and got to be a transition or migration or whatever the right word is. Lot of the cotton farmers, particularly people from Gainesville and Commerce, Georgia, that little area there; lot of people there were driven out and driven up here. We were welcoming people who knew how to grow cotton and they did. And some of them were land owners themselves. They couldn't grow cotton, so they didn't know what to do, so they moved up here and were tenant farmers. And the tenant farmer was really maybe a notch above slavery; with a good landlord maybe two or three notches above slavery, but some farms not much above slavery. A good many of them that were here already were black, which as I say was just a notch above slavery; you can think of better adjectives than that, I hope. These people from Georgia that started moving up here were white people. They were having a tough time; they had a lot on the ball. Course a lot of the prominent families now in Cleveland County moved up here as tenant farmers. I won't name them now, but I can name them to Kathryn sometime. There are upstanding, prominent people in Cleveland County now that started out as tenant farmers. That was a tough era.
Janet H: It's interesting in talking with those folks over at the NC Extension, that renting farmland is pretty common these days. A lot of folks that are farming are actually farming on rented farm land.
Jack H: Oh yeah. You can't buy farm land now and farm on it. Land values in Cleveland County are all over the lot, but I don't think there's much farm land open. Three thousand dollars an acre is probably the bottom price of land now in Cleveland County, wouldn't you say now, Kathryn? From there up and a lot of it you buy wouldn't have much in cultivation. I don't know what people are paying now to rent land, do you Kathryn?
KH: Not really.
LS: One thing Daddy mentioned last night, in addition to cotton, was the dairy farms; that%u2019s been a drastic change too.
Jack H: That's right. During my adult life, me and my brother had 2 dairy farms, Grade A dairy farms, meaning they passed the health department's requirements, which meant you kept clean tanks and so forth. They checked it pretty carefully. Most of the Grade A dairy farms had from 25 to 100 cows. That would be the range and not many had up close to 100, very few. Most of them had 30 and 40 and 25 cows in their dairy farms. That milk was handled carefully and kept cold and all that stuff. Kathryn can tell you a lot about the dairy farms. She is Miss Dairy Farmer. [laughter] KH: Was, was.
Jack H: Was. She can really tell you about that life, cause she lived it with her husband and 4 boys. Four big old tall boys, tall husband, and Kathryn. They had a long story about the dairy farm. There were also a lot of smaller people that produced milk that was not Grade A. They produced milk most any way they wanted to without any kind of health department deal. They put their milk in a tank, excuse me, in a 5-gallon milk can. They would set those cans out on the side of the road, and they had a pick up person, and he'd pick up those milk cans and leave the ones they'd picked up previously. Then carry those down to the Carnation milk plant in Shelby. You remember where the Carnation milk plant in Shelby was, Kathryn? Out there on Grover St. That was not Grade A. That was the milk you bought in little Carnation milk cans; they pasteurized it and that's where it come from. It was cooked and cooked and cooked.
RH: I still won't use canned milk.
Janet H: Now I want to know about Earl Scruggs.
Jack H: He reminds me nearly every time I see him, and, of course, I'm flattered every time he does it. He says, %u201CDoc, you remember me calling you one Sunday with a toothache." And, of course, I didn't, but I said, "I think so, Earl." Then he said, "I have a tooth that's just killing me. Then you said, %u201CJust meet me over at the dental office.%u201D I think I lived in Lattimore then, anyhow I went over there and took care of his toothache; he had an abscess central. And I relieved that by boring a hole in it and letting the gas escape. And when you did that it was immediate relief, and so he remembers that. One time when I was sitting with him somewhere in the last 2 or 3 years, he said, "I don't know if you know it or not, but I worked one summer in Lattimore." I said, %u201CNo, I didn%u2019t know that.%u201D He said, "I stayed with my brother-in-law, and he was working for a large land owner up there." I said, "Oh really, do you remember who it was?" He said, "Well my brother-in-law was George Blanton." I knew immediately who it was. Kathryn knows Ruby Blanton, who worked at, you remember Ruby; that was his wife and Earl's sister. And he said, "I worked up there and stayed with George and Ruby." Of course, Ruby's daddy was where George worked.
RH: They lived, actually, it was next door to us, but out in the country; it wasn't real close to us. It was the next house up above--
Jack H: So he said, "I worked up there that summer." [indistinct background conversation] Janet H: Immigrant farm workers. I understand in North Carolina that Latino immigration is increasing. I'm hearing there are a lot of immigrant farm workers; I don%u2019t know how many of them are guest workers. How many of them are residents, people who've decided to stay here and not go back? Do you use . . . Do you work with Felix . . . I forget his last name . . .He helps farmers find . . .
Jack H. I don't have any farm help. I've got my nephew down here who looks after my farm, Gary Gold. All we've got is a few beef cattle and a little hay. When we do hay we have to get a little help. All of the above as far as your --, they're legal and not legal. All that whole thing is all over North Carolina. They started out, as I recall--and I'm not positive about all this--but I'm thinking it started out having a temporary visa, whatever, card for farm labor. It evolved through the years; I forgot which administration it was; they had a moratorium or something. I don't claim to be an expert on this, but if they had proof of a non-farming job, they could get maybe a legimate green card. I think the green card had to do with farming, and I don't know exactly all those details. But there was a little transition in here when you could stay and not be a farm laborer. I had a young fellow that was working for me; gosh, it's been a long time ago now. It was when we were setting out these dogwood trees.
RH: Twenty years ago.
Jack H. He was up here as a farm laborer. They were harvesting green beans and squash and all kind of crops. I knew where some of them were staying. I had a bunch of azalea plants, hundreds of them and lots of dogwood trees, and we set them out all over this farm. I got some of those fellows to do it. And Ruby and I both remember, and this little boy's name was Abel, A-B-E-L, Llento. And we noticed him; he was about the size of Libby, when Libby was younger. He weighed about 110 pounds and was just thin as a rail and looked real sick, he really did.
RH: He was sick.
Jack H: He was sick. But when he set out those azaleas, he'd turn around and look at it, pat around the ground, do a little more shifting around, look at it. He was very interested in its appearance. He had pride in how it looked. So we picked him up the day before, and for some reason we went in the house, you remember that?
RH: It was getting kind of cold.
Jack H: I don't know why we went in the house, but we did. And it was cold, and they didn't have any heat.
RH: We saw where he was staying, some of the windows were out, broken, they just had cardboard. No heat, no nothing, and he looked sick. And we came on home.
Jack H: Started home.
RH: I don't know who said it; somebody said, "Would you mind if he stayed in this house? That's the awfulest, terrible place where he's staying." We had this great old big room in the basement and asked him if he wanted to come stay. Actually what we did, we were going to take cover out there, and in the meantime we asked him to come.
Jack H: He never left. [laughter] RH: He stayed in our basement, I forget how many years.
Jack H: He stayed here while we were in Raleigh for years.
RH: Yeah, he did. He sort of looked after the house while we would be gone all week. But he was scared to death.
Jack H: Believed in witches.
RH: He said his father had been killed when he was nine, and then later his mother. He said she was hexed, whatever that means. So he would be in the basement all by himself, and every time we came home he would say, "I hear things." And he was just scared.
Jack H: He believed in witchcraft.
RH: He did.
Jack H: Then. I think he's over it now. He's still here and he's legal. I quickly add that he's legal.
RH: He has 2 children and they're the cutest little things.
Jack H: And his wife is legal, and his 2 little boys are, of course, citizens too
RH: In fact, we went home with him one year and stayed the week of Christmas in Mexico. He had a little cement block house that had no running water in it.
Jack H: And it was the best house in the village; he had already sent a lot of money home when he was working for us.
RH: When we were going to stay, we took our daughter, son-in-law and their 3 boys with us. That's Cindy. He had fixed the bedroom up. We had carpet at the store and he bought him a pick up, and when we got there, our bedroom had carpet on the floor; nobody else had carpet.
Jack H: Most of the houses had dirt floors. One of the cute little things that happened on that trip, when Christmas day come around, that was the first time we'd ever been away from our house and children, and here we were down in Mexico. So we thought, well, we'll call them all and say Merry Christmas. So I don't know who we called first, but no answer; then we called another one and no answer; called another one, no answer. Cindy was with us, so we called all 4 of the others and no answer. And one of us said, %u201CUm maybe we better call the house," and I think they were all here. [laughter] RH: I'll never do that again; it was not fun being away at Christmas.
Janet H: Well I'm very conscious of the amount of time we've taken up with you. Is there anything else..?
Jack H: Surely not. [[laughter] RH: Kathryn, did you know that Jack has written 80 stories over the years? And his mother wrote what she remembered when she was 98, didn't she, Libby?
LS: It's 28 pages, handwritten on notebook paper.
RH: It's so full of history.
Janet H: Has anybody transcribed it?
LS: We've had copies made just in her handwriting.
Jack H: My mother lived to be a hundred and one, and I kept telling her, "Mom, you need to write just some of your little memories." And she said, "You know I'm not a writer, Jack." And I kept just sort of browbeating her and said, "Just sit down and write just whatever you think of." And so she did when she was 99 or 100, or 98; she was real old. She started writing about the first automobile that anybody had ever seen and all that kind of stuff. Oh, the farming deal, one of the things that's in her memories--it's hard to visualize. There was no such thing as canned foods in the stores. Canning, I don't know when it came along, but it was not then. And she said, her daddy was sort of a projector, an inventor type, and he figured out a way to can food in cans. And he had to solder, you know what I'm talking about? The tops, the tin can tops on the vegetables. And she said she thought he charged 2 cents a can. But they'd can those vegetables, put a little tin top on it, and solder around it with lead around the top. That was in her memories.
RH: We have several copies.
Jack H: We're about to run out.
LS: We've got letters; I think I put in photo boxes about 10 photo boxes of letters. And a lot of them are between Aunt Burnette and her boyfriend for ten years when she was at Meredith and he was at Wake Forest; then he went to medical school. His and hers, he died, so they never did get married.
Jack H: So we've got both letters. Letters she wrote to him, and his mama saved the ones she'd written to him. So we have a letter correspondence going on from 1927. They both had beautiful handwriting and they're really letters, about 50 pages, beautifully handwritten.
Janet H: Oh, how wonderful, what a treasure. [looking at Jack's mother's memories] Do you mind if we photo copy that and bring it back to you?
RH: We're trying to keep everything, but my house is so full of stuff, my house and Libby's house.
Janet H: It's wonderful that you have children that are interested in carrying on these archives.
LS: This letter from Nanny, in this she talks about making curtains for the fair booth in 1930. In this one she talks about canning cherries. All of them talk about either the garden or sewing or, you know, fabric.
Janet H: Now you say you've been doing writing yourself, Dr. Hunt?
LS: Right here are his stories.
Jack H: Oh, mine's not much.
Janet H: The handwriting, people used to have wonderful handwriting.
RH: They did; I remember Jack wrote, in 1910 he graduated--,
Jack H: What! I want to read that one. Mr. Monroe was one of the tenant farmers that came up here from Gainesville. That's Monroe Tire Company.
LS: This one talks about Maude Tanner and Willis
RH: Willie Falls, maybe
LS: This one says the children are picking cotton; Jack is going to buy firecrackers with his money.
RH: He was 7 years old; that was 1929.
LS: It also has some cancelled checks
Jack H: She says, %u201CBurnette, send your dirty clothes home.%u201D
LS: They mailed their clothes home to be washed, I quess.
RH: His mother had 4 children, and she also kept, was it 14 teachers, something like that. Was it that many, Daddy?
Jack H: [reading from a letter] %u201CBurnette, send your dirty clothes home and I will fix up your old dresses you left here and send them back with him. Sister said to tell you they had been picking cotton today; she picked 103 pounds, Jack 62, (laughter) and Robert 162. That was my brother and sister.%u201D
LS: This one says, %u201CThe children are all picking cotton, even Jack%u201D; he was 7 here. %u201CHe picked 24 yesterday, and 45 the day before. And says he's going to save his money until Christmas to buy firecrackers.%u201D
Jack H: Been picking from Mr. Monroe.
RH: He was one of the people that came from Georgia.
Jack H: [reading] %u201CDaddy's gone possum hunting tonight, so I quess we will have possum to eat some of these days.%u201D
LS: It's in pencil and it's dim.
DG: That's a problem; these letters are getting older and older. I wonder if there is a good way to preserve them.
LS: I don't know.
Jack H: [reading] %u201CWe went to Aunt Lizzie's Sunday P.M. Aunt Lick and Ralph were there, they said Robert didn't go back to school.%u201D That was Ralph's brother, Robert, who ended up a U.S. Marshall. That was one of my first cousins from Cherryville.
LS: This one was from Daddy's brother when he was at Carolina. He said, %u201CSay, don't you reckon you could box up the old black cow and send her down here? I need something besides Bobby to remind me of home.%u201D [laughter] Jack H: Bobby was our next door neighbor; he was Mr. Hewitt's son. Mr. Hewitt had 2 boys the same age.
RH: Libby has been wonderful. She is interested in saving stuff. She took all these letters that Burnette had received and written and all and boxed them up. And she's got some of them in, I said alphabetical order, but it's chronological order.
LS: Yeah, they're under my bed. [laughter] Janet H: I've just spot checked these; there're a couple of stories in here. And just scanning realized somebody needs to read through these and come back and talk to you.
RH: That's 1907 . . . . . That's Jack's uncle.
(indistinct background conversation)
Jack H: The school board--as I was telling you a while ago--. The school year revolved around cotton, and the local school board was pretty well autonomous. They pretty well ran the school; they had, of course, a relationship with the county superintendent, but the little local boards were pretty autonomous. This local board here was my daddy; Jack Dover, Ruth Dover--Ruth McBrayer--her daddy; and Ruby's grand paw; and the Wilson family; I don't know who's around from that family anymore, Kenny Wilson. They pretty well ran the schools. It happened that Lattimore had a very progressive group of trustees. So we had a pretty good school for that era.
DG: What do you think caused the shift from Lattimore being the hub of activity to Boiling Springs?
Jack H: Well the lack of commerce on the railroad, plus the college. No question about that, you see Boiling Springs--.
RH: I was on the mental health board. [background conversation] KH: You may have told me in the past, but about this house, who did you buy this from? What's the history of this house?
RH: We built it.
KH: Well okay, I wondered.
LS: But that house back there was here and they moved it.
RH: We bought the farm a long time ago, but we built over here across from Jack's dad. Cause I wanted it awful bad. And it took me years and years to get a house on it; he said, %u201CWe just can't build a house like that on this farm. Lattimore, I mean out in the country from Lattimore.%u201D He said we never could sell it. I said, %u201CI don't want to sell it; I want to live in it.%u201D I'm thinking I'll be here when I die.
Jack H: We had probably one of the best building sites in Shelby.
KH: This is wonderful. Oh, you had another site?
Jack H: Yeah, I was in a little group that owned some real estate down there. The last little thing we had was out there in what they called Windsor Acres. We dissolved it; we made a little money and had several lots left. We drew straws and ended up with 3 lots each. I traded 2 of my lots to get 3 lots together, and we had a beautiful lot down there. Three lots, crossed a little stream and we built a bridge across it, all that kind of good stuff and staked out the house.
RH: The string broke, and staked it out again to the right; that was the third time we staked the house again on that lot. I said, "Jack, there's some reason we're not supposed to build a house over there." All the time I wanted . . . . [laughter] The Lord moves in mysterious ways.
Jack H: She claims that she walked by here when you were how old?
RH: I was in school at Lattimore, and my best friend lived down here where our hay barn is, and I lived over here. So I walked by this place and I just thought it was a pretty place to have that old house and it had a circle drive in front of it. And I just always thought it was pretty. In fact, my house burned when I was 13, so we had to move across town for a little while. I begged my daddy to buy it, but he didn't have enough money, or didn't want to or something; he didn't buy it. So when Jack got along in practicing and let us buy a few pieces of ground, I really wanted this. It was owned by somebody in Alabama, and they didn't keep it up, you know. So when we finally decided--. We'd moved to Shelby, and he wanted to move all around. But with all these 5 children, I said it was too much trouble to move these kids.
Jack H: My goal was to live in Shelby, live in Forest City, live in Rutherfordton, and end up back in Lattimore, but she didn't go along with that. When she's wanting to, I think, embellish the story a little bit, she says she walked along here when she was 12 and wanted a house here.
RH: It's really, it's true, cause my best friend lived right down there and I walked by this place. People might not have known what they wanted at 13, but I thought I did.
KH: The house plan, did you find a house plan, did you sort of sketch it out?
RH: I found millions of house plans; I saved them for 15 years. And I thought I had decided on one; we'd seen it going to the beach, and we stopped and asked the lady if we could go in it and all that. I thought that was exactly what I wanted and never did get it built. Then we went to a dental meeting in Atlanta one day, and I saw this in the paper, the Atlanta Journal or whatever the paper was. So I came home and called the architect and asked him where I could see a house like that and it was in Clover, South Carolina. So Jack and his mother and me, and I think Burnette even might even have gone with us. We looked at the house, and I liked it all except 2 or 3 things and we changed those. The only thing I'd do now is make a bigger kitchen cause my kitchen's never big enough. [laughter] And especially when he found that big chopping block and wanted to put it in that kitchen. It was too big for the kitchen, but anyway, when you have to squeeze in to get by the chairs to go between the stove and the refrigerator and table. Nobody ever complains.
KH: When you have a hog killing, do you all finish working them all up?
Jack H: We give it to somebody else.
RH: The first few we killed at the cabin, we didn't give it all away. We%u2019d make sausage; we never did make any liver mush. Jenkins liver mush is so good, I didn't think we could make it as good.
Jack H: When we first moved here, I had about 15 sows in the little hog barn down here. We killed hogs--.
RH: He named the mother after me. [laughter] Jack H: She was very prolific. [laughter] Actually Junior%u2019s the one named that hog. We had a boy worked for us, lived in this house then, and he named that hog Ruby. She had about 15 little piglets, you know, and he said she looked like Ruby.
RH: We have made lard, but I'll never do that anymore. We made that when we lived over on Main Street in Lattimore.
DG: That's what we all used to cook with. You always fried with bacon grease; everybody saved their bacon grease. Nowadays--yuck!
Jack H: We used to put lard up in those big old crocks, you know, big old pottery things about this high. When I was growing up, we put lard and filled 2 or 3 of those up with lard and used to put them in the smoke house, and that's what mom cooked with all year. It got a little rancid toward this time of year.
Janet H: Do you remember where you got the crocks?
Jack H: I have no idea. Local around here, but I have no idea where they are. Two or three jugs, but not--.
RH: I have a bunch, but it's not any of the originals. I've been collecting them.
Jack H: Another thing, you know, that was routine in this part of the area--I guess it was everywhere. You had milk from your cows that you drank, and you made butter from the milk, let it clabber as they called it. My mama had a crock made out of clay or whatever. Her churn with a paddle in it in the bottom, a stick. I remember putting it in front of the fireplace and letting it get a little warm; then you just sit there and go up and down like that till the butter would rise. And you could sort of work it a little bit, so much you got it in your hands. And worked the milk out of it, and, of course, what you had left over was buttermilk. Then put a little salt in it, and of course everybody's got one of those butter things sitting around the house.
LS: You were asking about the social life, and I just happened to think, I don't think Daddy told you about it. After BYPU, you all went to people's houses, and they played music. I was thinking about the Fite family, Daddy, cause they all played a different instrument.
Jack H: Yeah, you asked about musical talents, and this was no exception, mostly piano and string instruments.
RH: They were kind of unique. They made some of their instruments out of a tin tub.
Jack H: Another little thing that's very interesting, people had little parties. Always girls that had the parties.
RH: Trying to get the boys to go.
LS: The letters tell a lot about that.
Jack H: Ruth Weathers would have a party, and they'd invite so many boys and so many girls, pretty well tried to make it equal. When you got there then you played little games, all kinds of fun little games, all wholesome. Then the climax of the party was they did what we called playing dates. They had a little date card.
RH : We never played dates at the parties I went to.
Jack H: They had little date cards; it was like a dance card. In certain places you had a dance card; we didn't have, we were too Baptist to dance. But we played dates and you had like 10 dates. So the boys went around and said, "May I have date number 2 with you, Kathryn?" "Yes, okay,%u201D or "no, I'm already full," if you didn't want to fool with him. And, of course, the key date was number 10 cause that was the last date. All the dates lasted like 3 minutes, or whatever.
All: Speed dating!
DG: That's how my daughter met her husband, speed dating. They call that speed dating now. I'm going to have to tell her that that's not original.
Janet H: They had the date that evening?
Jack H: At the end of the party. The last 30 minutes of the party would be playing dates. And so the boys asked the girls for date number 1, date number 2. And as I said, the key date was date number 10, cause that was the last date and sometimes they lasted over 3 minutes.
DG: Well what did you do with these dates, you just talk?
JH: Wandered around, talked, and, of course, some people decided to slip behind the bushes a little bit and all that kind of stuff.
LS: And so we were at Nanny%u2019s house one Mother's Day a few years ago with Donnis Martin, and she was talking about that, and Ailene Martin and Daddy. And somebody said, "Why'd you like that 10th one the best?" And mama said, %u201CBecause you might walk down that road just a little further." And Elizabeth said, "I can't believe my grandma said that."
RH: We didn't play dates
KH: What did the old folks think about those games?
Jack H: They were fine. It was all wholesome. You didn't necessarily try to sneak off in the corner; you still had your date with you. You'd talk or do maybe whatever; it was pretty innocent. It was a way of life.
Janet H: This has been fantastic.
Jack H: Next time you come, I'll try to talk a little more. [laughter]