Looking through the history book “Brush Brooms and Straw Ticks: Memories from Old-timers in Northwest Georgia” edited by R.T. Lasley and Sallie Holt, we’re learning history they don’t put in the textbooks, we’re learning the history of the common man and how it was for folks that weren’t famous politicians or generals.
If you were alive back then this would be your history, not the stories of Washington, D.C., or far-off battlefields. In your day-to-day life you would have experienced the washtub, the wood-burning stove, the kerosene lantern and the outhouse. Let’s see what else some of the locals of long ago had to say about their lives and loves as we finish our series.
Music and magical meals
From Barbara Steinbeck (born 1944) of Chatsworth we learn it was possible to get seafood here in the area. Saturdays for her as a kid consisted of clothes washing with the tub-washing machine and two pans for rinsing. The clothes would be dried on the clothesline. Then it was off to the aunt and uncle’s house for a Saturday night shindig. The featured meal was fried oysters, potatoes and Cokes. I would have thought it difficult to get your hands on oysters back then but I guess they came up via the railway, still fresh from the ocean near Savannah, a miracle of modern transportation.
After the oyster meal the family would get out the musical instruments and play music till it was time to go home. Her father played the guitar, the uncle the fiddle, aunt played piano and the grandmother could play the accordion. That made for lifelong memories of music and magical meals.
Another Chatsworth resident, James R. Smith, tells about some of the local men working for the Works Progress Administration during the Depression. They crossed a creek that morning using a big rock to step across. That afternoon they recrossed the creek but the rock had moved. Turns out it was a huge snapping turtle. Bill Smith took the turtle home and drilled a hole in the back of the shell. He tied one end of a rope to it and the other end to a little, red wagon. The turtle was strong enough to pull two kids at a time, albeit slowly. After the turtle rides, the turtle was cooked and eaten with enough meat for several families to have turtle that night.
The next story is about one of the neighbor kids getting a fever while out with Smith squirrel hunting along the river. He stopped at several springs to try and cool off but nothing helped. Once he got home the doctor was called and he was diagnosed with “rabbit fever.” Rabbit fever is tularemia, a bacterial infection spread to humans by tick bite, deer fly bite or by touching infected areas. Because of the touching part, the boy with the rabbit fever was kept in isolation. A new antibiotic was being tested, streptomycin, and this was given to treat the boy. It worked and the young man was still around when this story was related.
The kid never cussed again
One more memory from Chatsworth is from Virginia Lee Dixon. She grew up with her family in a shack on the Carter Plantation down in Carter’s Quarters. There was a stain on the floor in front of the fireplace that wouldn’t wash out and the story was it was a blood stain from someone who had been murdered in that shack. From that scary tale, Virginia noticed that several spooky things occurred living there.
Once, she was alone in the kitchen that was in the back of the shack and got the feeling she was being watched. Sure enough, she glanced out the window and there was the face of an old mountain man, as she describes it, staring back at her. With parted hair, long beard and missing teeth when he smiled at her, she dropped the trays in her hand and ran screaming into the living room. Checking outside, only large footprints were found below the window.
Another time, in a strange coincidence, her little 4-year-old brother started cussing up a storm in the yard while the mom was hanging clothes to dry. He didn’t really know what cussing was but was repeating what he had heard somewhere. The mom, in an effort to get him to stop, told him Santa Claus would come and get him.
Sure enough, in just a bit, a large man with white beard, overalls with a red belt and black boots came up in the yard looking like none other than the “Jolly Old Elf” himself. The kids ran screaming except for the little cuss. He stopped mouthing off and watched. The man asked if there was some work he could do in exchange for some food. There was no work, but the mom fed him beans and cornbread as she would never send anyone away hungry. The man ate and then said he guessed he better head on down the road. The kid never cussed again.
Another time, with the dad away working at night, the family had gone to bed when someone (or something!) started scratching on the tin roof of the shack. The family lay there for about 10 minutes. Finally one of the boys jumped out of the bed but got tangled in the sheets and crashed to the floor with a loud bang. The scratching stopped. Maybe it was one of the moonshiners that worked the still in the woods nearby trying to scare them off. Or maybe it wasn’t …
Like a ‘woman being murdered’
Eada Lois Elliott Nelson lived the first few years of her life up near Trenton on the mountain before she and her family moved to Whitfield County. On the mountain in Trenton they carried water from a spring for half a mile to the house. She was one of 10 kids. On the mountain they would also hear the cries of mountain panthers and bobcats which screamed like a “woman being murdered.” Her brothers saw and heard one in a tree one night and screamed out themselves, taking off running, with the little one beating the bigger one home.
And for a few years during World War II she lived in Panama City, Florida, where her dad and mother worked in the shipyards. That was where she first saw a flush toilet. After that, when they moved back to Whitfield County she went to one of the schools here which still had outhouses for the students.
When she moved to Whitfield County, her father died at just 44. Her mom would buy three patterned feed sacks to make one dress for the girls. She remembers the flour sacks were made of softer fabric and were used for underwear.
The oldest sister, Ruth, was 15 and as the oldest daughter with a mom that was frequently pregnant or with a newborn had the job of taking care of the older babies and children. Tired of that and with a boyfriend, she ran off to Ringgold where the couple could get married the same day. The dad was furious but the marriage lasted more than 60 years and saw five children. Fried rabbit was a treat that came from the woods after an afternoon of hunting, and fried frog legs were a treat from a nearby pond, after a night of frog gigging. Careful the frog legs don’t jump out of the pan! (Seriously!)
Back in those days (the late ’40s/early ’50s) the bus drivers were allowed to drive the buses on Sunday morning and Wednesday night to church services, providing rides for people without cars. When Nelson got on the bus she spotted the driver who she thought was the best looking boy she had ever seen. It wasn’t long before he asked her for a date and the rest, as they say, is history. As of her writing these memories, their marriage was 56 years old.
No car, no electricity, no indoor plumbing
Sybil Westbrook (born 1931) from Rocky Face sums up some of the main items most of these memories in the book present for folks growing up here from the 1920s up to the 1950s, namely no car, no electricity, no running water or indoor plumbing. I would add to her list the making of clothes from flour and feed sacks, what a big deal wash day was when it was done by hand with lye soap and a washboard, and growing your own food in a garden. It was a world of walking (or riding sometimes in a horse- or mule-drawn wagon), oil lamps, trips to the well or spring and journeys to the outhouse, even in the coldest days of winter.
Sybil’s memories include her father growing some cotton for a cash crop that would result in new shoes in the fall for the kids, and her mother hand-tufting bedspreads for extra money. She remembers playing ball with a ball of twine and a stick for a bat. She remembers making playhouses by raking out the rooms in the pine straw, and also, on a pine-straw-covered hillside, sliding down it on a curved board like a sled going down a snow-covered hill.
All the memories these “old-timers” have related teach us about a world that no longer exists here but that they remember, tough as times were, as warm memories of family, fun and love.
Mark Hannah, a Dalton native, works in video and film production.