G. W.

G.W.

Eddie Lunsford

Writers Club Press

San Jose New York Lincoln Shanghai

G.W.

All Rights Reserved © 2001 by Eddie Lunsford

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

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This book is a combination of fact, mountain folklore and fiction. It is based on the life of the late G. W. Lunsford, his family and his friends. Certain events and characters within the story are entirely fictitious. As such, any resemblance between these fictional events or characters and actual events or people is pure coincidence.

ISBN: 0-595-17602-X

ISBN: 978-1-4697-0211-7 (ebook)

This book is dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, G. W. Lunsford, and to the legacy he left behind: his family. Granddaddy, this world is a different place and a better place because you lived here.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Epilogue

About the Author

Glossary

Acknowledgements

The Appalachian Mountains are rich with culture, tradition, humor and love. I was very fortunate to have been born into a family that values keeping the past alive by telling stories and remembering the people and the practices of days gone by. Thanks to my mother and father, Cecil and Hildred Jones Lunsford; to my grandparents, to all of my aunts and uncles, my cousins and my other relatives.

To Aunt Lelia and Uncle David Young: Thank you both so very much for the work space. I appreciate it more than you know.

Introduction

In the summer of 1991,1 passed a sad milestone in my life. At that time I was working second shift at a factory in Andrews, North Carolina. I was also about to begin working on my Master’s degree at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee. I clearly remember hearing some of my coworkers saying that the phones in the plant were not working that night. I remember thinking to myself What if something goes wrong somebody could have an emergency. A very unsettling felling stayed with me throughout the remainder of the shift. Something was wrong.

I left work at the usual clock out time of 1:30 am the next morning. When I got home, there was a note held to the refrigerator by a magnet. The note was in my mother’s handwriting. I read the note under the light above our kitchen sink. I tried to be quiet so Mama and Daddy could rest.

Eddie: James called. Ora passed away at seven o’clock tonight.

Daddy isn’t going to work. I tried to call you-but no answer.

Every possible human emotion came over me as I stood there. I was sad for my grandmother. I remember looking at the clock to see how long she had been dead. I wanted to wake Mama and Daddy but I did not. I knew that the news was sad for both of them as well. I was furious about not being able to get a phone call at work. What a way to hear that my grandmother died. Very quickly though, my thoughts returned to Mamaw. I looked at the clock again. I never really expected her to die. She was old and very sick with diabetes and probably, Alzheimer’s disease. The last time that I saw her, she was so confused and anxious. She was practically blind, but too proud to let anyone even suspect it. She had become adept at feeling her way through eating a meal and at so many other things. Unless you watched her very carefully, you would have never known that she could hardly see.

Mamaw had been living with her son and his family in Pennsylvania for a short time. They ended up putting her in a nursing home. She died there in Pennsylvania. Prior to that, my grandmother was living with my aunt Lelia in Canton.

Before too long, my Mamaw Jones joined the others. One day I realized that I no longer had a living grandparent. That fact has haunted me off and on since then. I started to think differently about some things from that point on. Tonight, I realize that I want people to know who my grandparents were. I want their earthly lives to be represented by more than a tombstone, or a faint recollection, in the coming years. That is why I have decided to write this book. I have always toyed with the idea of a book about my grandparents. It has been on my mind a great deal lately. All through my life I have found that if I just start something, it will be finished with God’s blessing if it is meant to be.

All of my grandparents were fascinating people. I did not love one of them more than another. Each was a special person. My poor biological paternal grandmother died in 1928 when my father was only a few days old. Her name was Carrie Gecona Thompson Lunsford but I know little else about her. The few people that I have talked to who actually remember her were always quick to mention her beauty and her intelligence. I am fascinated by every detail of her short and mysterious life.

My maternal grandparents were very special people. Verdie Ellen Hardin Jones came from good Cherokee Indian stock. She was a tiny lady and she was so sweet. Mamaw Jones kept a pleasant demeanor and a good sense of humor late into her life. I still imagine what her youth on the Beaver Creek reservation land must have been like. Her ancestors included attorneys who spoke before congress, preachers, drunks and everything in between. I am told that her great-grandfather, Charles Hardin, helped to build the Washington Monument. Papaw Jones was as much a mountaineer as anyone else. He always made me think of a distinguished southern gentleman though. He chewed tobacco and always had a matchstick or a toothbrush made from a black gum twig in his mouth. He tipped his hat to every lady that he saw. There was a special magnetism about him. It came from his love of the Lord, I suppose. Elbert Jerry Jones died of a stroke in 1973 when I was in the second grade. He moved his wife and family from Cherokee County, in the late 1930’s, when my mother was a small girl. Mamaw and Papaw Jones remained in Maryville, Tennessee until they died. When I was a child, we would go to visit them often. If we didn’t stay with them, we stayed at Aunt Reba’s house. In my young and sheltered eyes, Maryville was surely the biggest city on earth. I guess that Mamaw and Papaw Jones left their native Cherokee County because of simple economics. There were good jobs in the city. Papaw made a good living and a wonderful home for his family. I have always admired him.

For some reason it seems very natural to focus this writing on my paternal grandfather, George Washington Lunsford. He was born March 21,1887 in Cherokee County, North Carolina. He must surely be the most fascinating person I have ever known. In all honesty, I could not call him a favorite though. He lived very close to us and I spent a good amount of time with him and Mamaw. His life is most endearing to me for that reason, I suppose. He had a very special way with people. He was nice to everyone and tried hard to find good things in people.

Before he got to be a very old man, my grandfather would still make walks from his house into town on an almost daily basis. One story relating to this sums up the kind of person that my grandfather was in a wonderful way. It seems that one day Granddaddy was just about home, with less than a half mile of walking to go, when one of the town’s taxi drivers spotted him. I guess the driver thought he would do a good deed and offer someone a free ride home. He pulled up along side of my grandfather and offered his help. Granddaddy thanked him and got in the car. My grandfather did not speak one word as the taxi driver made a wrong turn toward a neighboring community. The driver let my grandfather out a little more than a mile from his home. Granddaddy thanked him graciously and waited for him to drive away. Then he turned toward home and started walking again. We all figured that the taxi driver had mistaken my grandfather for another fellow, who lived nearby, that he resembled. Most people would have reacted in a predictable way… not my grandfather! Every time he told this story, the joke was on him. There was never an unkind word about the taxi driver. He accepted a kindness and made a joke out of a mistake. When Granddaddy laughed about the story, he laughed at his own predicament.

I am at present very troubled by how I will proceed with the writing of this book. How I wish that I could spend one more hour with each of my grandparents, especially Granddaddy Lunsford. I would love to be able to write down a day by day account of his life, but I can not. I am torn about what to tell and what not to tell. I come from a huge extended family that included 13 paternal aunts and uncles, nine maternal ones, and 64 first cousins. I have no idea how many second cousins, third cousins and other relatives I have. I fear making someone mad or embarrassing someone. That certainly is not my goal in writing this book. If I threw caution to the wind, I suppose that I could write a dozen books. Why did you have to write about that? I only want to create a record of my grandfather’s life to share with other people. I do not care about making money or anything like that. I am neither a brilliant writer nor a good story teller. Having admitted that, I can only say that I will put forth my best effort in writing this book. I do believe that other people will find my grandfather’s life story as fascinating and as worthy of preservation as I.

At any rate, I have decided to write from my grandfather’s own perspective. I will have to trust my memory and the research that I have conducted about his life. I am sure that I will change a few names to try to avoid embarrassing someone. There will be many times, I guess, when I will need to create some details. I will add some fiction to keep it interesting. I will also leave out some facts, so as not to make it too interesting. I will trust God and my grandfather’s spirit to guide me as I write. I really doubt that this book will ever be published or read by anyone. Even so, I will try to finish it and perhaps write about Mamaw and Papaw Jones one day.

Eddie Lunsford

Chapter One

Hanging Dog

I am a poor wayfaring stranger

Traveling through this world below

There is no sickness, toil or danger

In that world to which I’ll go

I’m going there to meet my mother…

I have searched my mind over and over again trying to remember my mother. For hours at a time, especially late in the evening, I have tried every way in the world to picture her face or something about her but I can not. Her name was Nancy. She was a Sneed from down around Ebenezer. My mother died from TB when I was just a tiny baby. I was only about fourteen months old. Some folks say that you can’t remember back when you were that young. I don’t know about it myself. My mother must have held me and kissed me. Even as sick as she was, she must have fed me and sang to me.

The first thing that I can remember real clear was a big snow when we were still living down on Hanging Dog. Some folks call the area near where we lived Grandview. Just for a few seconds, like a movie show, I

G.W. can picture our old house covered up with snow and with smoke coming out of the chimney. I was crying because I couldn’t get out of the snow. Larkin, Osee, Lawson and Rollin were playing all around me and one of them set me down in that old cold snow. Some lady’s voice…she was fussing at them as she picked me up and nestled me inside her coat. I remember her petting me and giving me some sugar. I can still see her black shoes and her full heavy skirts. I remember her pulling the door shut behind us and I saw the yellow fire glowing from our old fireplace in the house. I guess that I should have asked someone about it but I never did. She was my sweet sister Mary, I guess. Mary always did look after me before she left home. She could have been just about any aunt, or maybe even Granny Lunsford or Granny Sneed. I do not know. I was glad to see her, that is all I know. If I could just place a year on it, I could be more certain. I just about know that she was not my stepmother. I wish I knew if she was my mother.

Even as a little boy I knew about my mother and knew that she was dead. Morgan, my oldest brother, and sister Mary told me a lot of things about her. Everybody always said that Mary looked a lot like her. Daddy made sure that I heard stories about her too. He told me over and over again that his mother had passed away when he was only about six years old. Granddaddy remarried just like Daddy did. His stepmother was really like a grandmother to me. I guess she seemed like a mother to my daddy because she was the one who really raised him. He really did love her. I was a little different from him because I could not remember my mother at all. I never did feel sorry for myself but still wish that I could have known my mother. Just about everyone in the family always talked about her. I grew up just knowing that my mother was dead. Even my stepmother, Mommy, knew her. She talked like they were pretty good friends when they were younger. Daddy told me that she had been sick off and on for years with the consumption. That is what the doctors called it. We always called it the TB. Daddy told me that she got some better right after I was born and did pretty good for a few months. The last bad spell my mother had killed her though. He said that she could hardly breathe there at the last. It ate her bones nearly up too. That was the way of TB. You could sometimes carry it around with you for years. You never really got better but the sickness came and went. It was a bad, bad disease to have. Daddy had my Mother buried at the Moss cemetery there above Marble. His mind had been studying moving off Hanging Dog even before she died. Daddy loved Hanging Dog. It was where he was raised as a boy. Those old hills we lived in was the only home that Daddy ever even knew. My daddy really did love the pretty cove that him and Morgan had found on Vengeance Creek, too. He vowed that he would build a good home for us there.

Daddy was born and raised down around Hanging Dog. His name was John. His grandfather, Michael came and settled down around Owl Creek with one of his brothers just about the time the county was formed. I guess that was in the late 1830’s or so. They got a lot of land after most of the Indians went out west to Oklahoma. There were still several Indian families living there abouts and a good many of them were on Hanging Dog. My granddaddy, Thomas Lunsford, had about 100 acres or so of land.

Granddaddy and some of his brothers fought in the War Between the States. He got discharged when Grandmother Mary died. Uncle David, Uncle John and Uncle Michael stayed on to fight for a while. They saw some hard times. Those three, my uncles, saw a lot of this country but for most of their time in the war they were prisoners. I remember one of them saying that they were treated worse than any livestock during the time that they were in the prison camps. Daddy and Granddaddy told me about the soldiers coming into Murphy and setting the whole town afire. They burned out the courthouse and nearly everything. I reckon that some of the Yankees had come in to try to get out of going to court over some charges against them. They couldn’t find the papers in the courthouse so they just burned the whole works out. Daddy said you could see the black smoke for miles. Those were hard times for everybody. There wasn’t much to eat.

Just about everybody still talked about the time that the soldiers fought the Yankees on Hanging Dog. That was about the same time that they burned the courthouse out. From what I can remember the old folks telling, some little boy from up around these parts rode over to the camp at Valleytown to tell the soldiers about the courthouse. Soldiers were everywhere around these parts then. Everybody knew that something was up. They followed the Yankees over toward Hanging Dog to try to run them out. Granny said that they tried to make the Yankee soldiers think that nobody was at home. Most of the men, as I said, were gone off to war anyway. The older men kept the Home Guard up but that was about it when all the soldiers were gone. They even took boys as young as sixteen into the war. Daddy was only about ten or eleven years old at the time. He remembered hiding out at Granddaddy’s house when the news came around. The old men and the older boys kept their guns loaded. Well, them soldiers come on up from Valleytown and jumped the Yankees early that morning. I have heard tale that they had only about six shots a piece. They sent them out of this place though. Nobody was killed but a few of the Yankee soldiers was hurt pretty bad. None of the Confederate boys was hurt. I have heard Daddy say that he remembered hearing that the Yankee soldiers stole a wagon off of somebody on their way out and carried their wounded down to Madisonville, Tennessee. The folks found out later that some other Yankees had been in Valleytown and carried off one or two of the business men. They got old uncle Jim Taylor. Now, he was a big somebody about these parts. They let him loose though. Another fellow, they never did hear from again. Only the ones in town had really seen it hard that time. Not long after that the war ended. Daddy said that that fight on Hanging Dog was just about the last one fought in the whole war.

There were still a few bushwhackers or renegades out and about in those times too. The renegades would come around and loot out everything that people had. They wasn’t fighting for any one side. They just knew that most of the men were gone off to war. They were so full of the devil that they would come around to these homes where a woman was about the only adult around. They would raise the devil and steal a whole family blind. Lots of times, they would burn out homes too.

People were still scared but slowly things got back to normal. Times were always hard in those days anyway. Folks were used to having to work all of the time for whatever they had in the line of food, or whatever. Not too many folks around these parts really sided that much during the war. It did not matter that much to people in this part of the country. They got up companies in Valleytown, from Marble and Murphy once or twice. See, the boys would fight for either side. Mostly they joined the rebels, according to the old folks. They stayed loyal to North Carolina but did not have a whole lot at stake either way. About all they was interested in was keeping their families and homes safe. But, I’ll tell you, they fought hard.

* * *

Daddy was only about 15 when he married Mother. She was 16. They set up house keeping in a little old house that some of the family had built in years past. It had been just setting empty there for a long time. Granddaddy told him he could fix it up and live there when he married. My daddy was a really good carpenter and could do a man’s work when he was young. I guess Granddaddy and Granny Sneed were impressed by how he fixed that old place up. He built on another room before him and my mother got married. He even built a kitchen with a big fireplace out from the old house. Everyone gave their blessing and Daddy and Mother was married in March of 1869. They farmed, raised their kids and had a good life together for nearly twenty years before my mother died. Daddy built on another room or two as the family got bigger.

My oldest brother was Morgan. He favored my Daddy in both his looks and his actions. I had one full sister named Mary. Larkin, Rollin, Lawson and Osee were my other full brothers. Mother had another baby named Nelson. He was between Rollin and Lawson. He died before I was even born. Daddy said that Nelson had the TB and that there had been a bad plague of the influenza that came through. Daddy said that everybody in the country was sick. Little Nelson caught the flu along with everyone else. He was just so sick, with so much wrong, that he didn’t survive it all. Nelson was just three years old. Mother and Daddy buried him at the Baptist church cemetery there on Hanging Dog. Daddy always took us up to his little grave on Decoration Day every year. That was a time when folks would go out to the cemeteries and clean up the graves. They would take a picnic with them and just make a whole day’s work out of it. Your family, if you had any that lived off, would come to visit that day. The women would cook for a day or two just to get ready for all of the visiting, the work and the company. The old folks would tell stories about everybody they remembered as they stood at the foot of their family graves, or the graves of neighbors or friends. Those stories were interesting to me. I think it bothered my Daddy that Nelson was up there in that cemetery all by himself as my Daddy got older. He could not afford a good rock for the grave but I always tried to look after it when I could.

Morgan and Mary always told me that after my mother died, Daddy took off and stayed gone for nearly a month and a half. They said that we all liked to have starved to death. Of course I was just a baby and I don’t remember it. I guess that he had to be by his self for a while. I never held it against him. The two old Gentry women helped to look after us, I am sure. They were sisters and part Indian. I asked Daddy one time how old they were. He told me that they were old women when he was just a little boy. He said that he reckoned they was as old as the hills. They had always lived around Hanging Dog, as far back as even Granddaddy could recall. Them two old women were as good as any doctors when it came to taking care of the sick people. We called on them all of the time, as did most everybody else around. They knew a lot of doctoring. They were the best granny women around, Mommy said. They made their own medicines with plants, tree bark and just about anything you could think of. The old folks called them yarb doctors. The Gentry women doctored with teas, poultices and other concoctions. Some of the things they did were strange. Annie, they said, could blow out the thrush and stop blood with a verse from the Bible. I’ve seen her hold a little baby in her lap and cup her fist over the baby’s mouth and nose. She would gently blow her own breath into the baby’s mouth and cure the thrush that way. Elda, the oldest one, once spit out a mouthful of some kind of tea all over me when I was bad sick and in bed with the flu. That’s about the only time in my life to speak of that I was really sick. Daddy said that they helped with me when Mother died. When they were very old, Daddy bought their place off them for a hundred dollars. They were good old women. Anyway, us children managed on our own for a while. Daddy came back and carried on with his farming and blacksmithing like usual. He was a good man.

In 1889, Daddy married my stepmother, Synthia Odell. She was a good woman and raised us kids just like her own. I loved her and thought of her as my mother. I always called her Mommy. For some reason, other folks called her Beet. Still, I knew I had a real mother who had died. Daddy and Mommy had a house full of other kids. They were my brothers and sisters too. I sometimes call them my halves only to keep things straight and to have folks remember my mother. Oscar, Girtrude and Esco were all born before we left Hanging Dog for good about 1893. The others were Major, Neil, Emmer and Daisey. They were born on Vengeance Creek. Mommy nearly died having Arvil. She was just about fifty years old and getting sick with sugar. Arvil was born too early and did not live. Mommy was under the doctor’s care for nearly a month after trying to have Arvil.

* * *

When I was a little boy, there was one or two earthquakes on Hanging Dog that I can remember right well. Daddy said they had a few along when he was growing up. There were only one or two bad ones. I guess that it was about 1893, in the spring, when there was little quakes that had been going on for a couple of weeks. You could hardly feel them unless you were inside. The furniture would move and the dishes and pots and pans would rattle a little. They really did not scare any of us though. Daddy would laugh and say Well, there went another one. We just got to where we laughed it off when one of those earthquakes would come around.

We were outside in the garden doing some early spring planting. I remember us working real plain that day. Esco and Girtrude were asleep in the kitchen where Mommy was cooking some dinner for us all. I still do not know how my Daddy acted so quick, but he did. There came a tremble and quake that I could feel under my feet. It was a bad one, not like any that I had felt before. I heard a loud, strange pop.. I had heard nothing like it before or have I since. I will not ever forget that sound though. The way Daddy acted scared me nearly to death. My heart started to race.

My God. he said. You young’nes get to the house right now.

As I looked up from my work toward Daddy, he was grabbing up Oscar and starting off in a straight run toward the house. I could not believe what I was looking at. I had to stare at it to make myself believe it. There was a big spout of water coming out of the ground faster and higher than anything I had ever seen. Us children stood there staring at it. Daddy started screaming at us to run to the house.

Get yourself up here now. He said. All you young’nes get up to the house right now!

Mommy looked out of the kitchen door and said God help us.

I have never heard so many people praying before in my life. Mommy ran outside and gathered up the babies and followed the rest of us in the house. I looked back and got really scared. That water was just shooting right out of the ground. It just come right out in a big column. I never had seen the beat. You could see mud in it but it was kind of clear. Rocks were flying to and from the ground. I thought that the end of time had come for sure. That first time I saw hail, I thought that too. I thought the stars were a falling out of the sky.

We got in the house and shut the door. Mommy handed the babies over to some of the older boys and told us all to get up to the loft. She gathered up some things off of the floor and we all followed her up the ladder to the loft.

What is it Daddy, what is it? We must have all asked him a dozen times each.

Finally, Mommy started in too. John, what in the world…Where is all that water coming from. What do you reckon it is?

I ain’t never seen such a thing in my life was all that Daddy managed to get out of his mouth.

We could hear water hitting the roof of the house. Rocks and sticks would strike the house top every few seconds and scare us nearly to death. The water just kept coming and coming. We were trembling up in that loft. None of us knew what was going on, nor what would happen next. By that time the babies had started to cry. I tried to hush up little Girtrude. I felt so sorry for her. Daddy opened the shutters to get a better look outside. I crawled around and sat in his lap as he crouched in the floor at the window. That shoot of water was still coming out of the ground as fast as it could. It was higher than our house by a good twenty feet or so.

There goes the garden. Daddy said. The whole place is getting washed out.

By now, I was getting really scared. The water was running down the hollow like a river in two or three places. It was beginning to pond up too. Mommy stood up and looked down at the front room. Water was coming up through the floorboards.

You children wait right here. She said in a firm tone. "I’ll be right back.

Beet, you be careful. Daddy told her. Wait and I will go down with you.

Us children did not know what to think. I watched Daddy and Mommy gathering up bed quilts and clothes and putting them on top of every piece of furniture we had. By now the roof had started to leak in a place or two as water, mud and rocks rained down upon us. I hugged Girtrude close to me and rocked her there on the floor trying to get her quiet. I realized that Mommy and Daddy were trying to get things up off of the floor. Mommy got the Bibles, and a few pieces of clothes, and wrapped them into a bundle with one or two of the quilts. She started up the ladder toward the loft. She was crying.

John get back up here! she demanded.

Daddy opened the front door and looked out. The water was still ponding up outside from what I could tell. I handed Girtrude over to Lawson and stuck my head out of the loft window. That old waterspout was still spewing out of the ground. We got really quiet and listened to the water pounding away at the rooftop. I could see water coming in trickles onto the floor from the fireplace. It still looked like a little water was still seeping through the floorboards. In a place or two along the walls of the loft, a little stream of water poured along the slope of the shingled roof and down the walls. Just then we heard a strange loud rumble. Mommy’s face grew white.

Move out of that window George she said to me.

Daddy climbed back down to the front room.

John!

Daddy please get back up here. Somebody cried.

You all be real quiet and still, he said. It’ll be ok.

Daddy eased around to the front door again and opened it. He walked out on the porch. We heard wood cracking and water rushing. Daddy shut the door and walked back up the ladder to the loft. He shook his head in disgust.

"Well there went your kitchen, Beet.

What? Mommy said.

The wagon is turned over and I’m fearful that the barn will be next. I hope the cows are ok.

We just sat there in silence. The children still whined. It seemed like we were there forever, not knowing what to do or say. I eased back over to the window and looked out. Water was everywhere. It was running down the valley below the house and standing in a still pond. This must be what the ocean looks like. Brush and trees were everywhere in the water and mud. The water was still boiling out of the ground. Just then, it quit. That water just stopped coming out of the ground as quick as it started. I still don’t know why.

Thank God I said.

Everyone kept quiet and we all just sat there. The silence