Have you ever wondered where the heart of a community lies?
Is it in its elected leadership? Is it within the works of the members of its local churches? Perhaps within the framework of the civic clubs and fraternal organizations? Read more
When I was a child, my parents instilled in me a lengthy list of expected behaviors for a man in training.
Behaviors such as stand when shaking a man’s hand and look him in the eyes, a woman’s hand is taken not shaken, a promise made is a promise kept, speak truth and dispel lies of others, secrets are meant to be kept; and stand against a bully and protect those they seek to harm. These are just a few of years of lessons intertwined in my raising to adulthood.
I was also a devotee of the Arthurian legends and codes of honor adhered by early knights and heroes who were inspired by those stories. Ultimately, I discovered many of my ancestors were among those inspirees.
In addition, a great influence were the films and television shows of the 1940s-1960s which taught us lessons and provided models in life to inspire us to be more than we are such as “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Ozzie and Harriet,” “The Rifleman,” and so many more.
With each passing year, I look out upon those who find their way into our view, so-called celebrities, politicians, athletes and so many whom this world now places upon some kind of pedestal. I have to shake my head as I see images, films and tv shows, hear comments they say, see actions they do, and wonder what has become of the men and women who once inspired us, who led us to greater heights in life and various fields of endeavor.
I know there are many good and decent people who live their lives and make a difference in their communities. I have met many. As a journalist, I have tried to tell their stories. Unfortunately, those are not the people who our culture uplifts onto pedestals.
I long for the days of heroes who strived to lives of character. No matter what the reality, the public face was kept appropriate so not to destroy how the public perceived who they were.
We have actors, singers, and social media celebrities who wallow in excessive behavior that reflects an inability to understand right from wrong, indulgence in sin, and existing in pettiness.
I have seen elected officials whose deeds are not honorable, words are not true, who are accoladed in their efforts as their actions hurt those they serve.
I do not know what the answer is, except, the future of character is within our hands. We have the ability to make ourselves better in how we carry ourselves and interact with other people. We can raise the next generation with better role models and stronger life influencing guidance that uplifts others rather than tearing down. We can turn off the movies and television shows that degrade the quality of our lives and not support the advertisers which make those possible.
Any who feel they are among those whose character reflects all things good and inspiring, should place themselves in situations so others can see their lives and be inspired. Run for political office; become involved in major activities and events in your community; take on a community problem and solve it; and mentor youth and adults in talents where you excel.
Modern culture is only our friend if it reflects our expectations of what life should be. Shape it, don’t let it shape you and yours.
One of my favorite feelings as a kid was achieved by walking barefooted through the cool grass in the early morning.
I think for most of my childhood, shoes were simply an accessory wore when you went to town. Otherwise, there was nothing covering the bottoms or the tops of my feet. The bottoms were always a little tender as the transition from cold weather shoes happened but once the soles of the feet were hardened a bit, the only thing that became problematic was crossing blacktop in the heat of the day. You would cross the road like a duck on a bed of tacks exclaiming “Ow, Ow, Ow” for however many steps it took to get through. Then you would stand in the grass until the burn lightened up.
Despite this minor inconvenience, walking barefooted would carry us everywhere we went from neighbors’ homes, on bike rides, to the pool, to the local store, to the creek and the woods and everywhere in between.
Maybe once or twice a week, my mom would call me in from play saying we were going to town and then I would have to remember the last place I put my shoes, take out a fresh shirt and get ready for an afternoon of “lookin’ and feelin’.” This usually meant a little fun along the way, maybe an ice cream sundae from Woolworth’s lunch counter or maybe even an afternoon movie matinee.
If I was lucky enough to have a friend along, to my mother’s chagrin, it could mean a game of hide and seek around the clothing department as she and one of her friends looked through the racks. The games would be short lived as soon as my mother noticed with a promise of discipline if we did not settle down. In most cases we did. However, there were a few times which pushed the envelope and developed a hand-shaped red tattoo on my posterior.
No matter the experience, I cherish those memories of the days when bare feet strengthened my understanding of the world. Each step toughened my soul and took me to so many adventures which fueled my imagination and gave me hope that another adventure was always just a few steps away.
If you are far away from these days, why don’t you take your shoes off in the morning and walk across your back yard in the cool of the morning, or drive to a nearby creek and stick you bare feet in the water as it rushes by. Find that barefooted hopeful youth who once fueled your dreams to uplift your spirit.
Today most folks don’t give a second thought if they get their clothes dirty to go and change into another outfit. Of late, I have found myself babying a electric dryer as I have been trying to get parts to keep it working, so I am a little more cautious about how many clothes I have to wash.
In the valley below the Gravelly Spur, an abundance of clothes in the closet was not something that most folks experienced.
The Wood boys, like everyone, were often faced with limited things to wear. Little Woody had long grown out of his white cotton dress that he wore in the shadow of his late mother.
The dresses provided mothers the added benefit to keep track of a child when they had to leave the room by lifting the old iron bedpost and placing it on the tail of the gown. That kept the toddlers from toddling into mischief.
By this point the young boy had graduated to two pairs of overalls and two shirts.
After working in the fields two days in a row, both pairs of his overalls and his two shirts were stained with red dirt and mud. He came to his older sister and said “I haven’t got anything to wear to school tomorrow.”
She took him into the bedroom reached into the closet, pulled out her extra dress, and laid it on the bed.
“Get that on and I’ll wash up your overalls.”
Little Woody didn’t have much choice in the matter it was either put the dress on or run around in his all together. So out of the clod covered overalls and into the gray colored dress he slipped.
So even though it was late in the day, she pulled out the washtub and the warshboard and scrubbed them overalls from rusty brown to a faded blue.
She took them out and hung them to dry on the clothesline, as one would normally do.
As the family went to sleep that night, the temperature dropped way below freezing. When the family slowly made their way out into the kitchen wiping the sleep from their eyes with the rooster’s crow, little Woody’s older sister sent one of the other boys to fetch the overalls while she cooked.
He brought them in frozen solid, straight as a board. He stands them in the corner taking a bit of delight in the feat.
Woody is standing there in her gray dress and says “What are we going to do, I can’t were those to school and I am sure not wearing this dress.”
She took the overalls and shirts and placed them on chairs by the fireplace and within just a short time the overalls and shirts had melted into something looking like the occupants had simply disappeared. She quickly ironed one of the shirts.
Woody could not wait to get out of the dress and as soon as the overalls were warm enough and before the iron had hit them, he was into one of the pairs and out of that dress.
While the experience might not have been so bad for little Woody if his older brothers did not see the whole thing as an opportunity for some good old fashion ribbing once they got to school.
When the Moss brothers asked the Wood boys what they had done the night before each mentioned some adventure they had but one of them had to say, “Woody didn’t do anything. He was afraid to come out of the house cause someone might see him wearing sister’s dress.”
Needless to say this was enough to get Little Woody’s blood to boiling and with a little more agitation its safe to say that clean pair of overalls picked up a little schoolyard dirt as the kidders found themselves on the receiving end of his frustration.
Good thing his sister washed both pairs of overalls or he’d been back in that dress all over again.
( From “A Mountain Pearl: Appalachian Reminiscing and Recipes” by Randall Franks)
It was already the dark of the night when I went out to the woodpile and gathered as many pieces of wood as my little arms would hold. I tried to get into the back door but could not manage to figure out how to turn the tarnished brass doorknob while keeping my load.
It was freezing outside, and it was not much warmer inside. I scrambled at the door long enough to see my breath fogging up the panes of glass in the door.
Perhaps that is what Grandma noticed as she opened the door and said, “Get in here boy before you freeze to death.”
“Yesum,” I said as I rushed through the kitchen into the darkened living room. There sitting about three feet from the wall was a pot-bellied stove on a large piece of metal on the floor.
I was in kindergarten when my Grandma Kitty moved to a smaller farm in a rural area outside Dayton, Tenn. This was our first winter visit at the old four-room house.
She was much closer to town and her brothers and sisters than before, but still the move wasn’t as joyous as one might think.
She left behind the place she and Grandpa had called home and raised their family. A homestead where our family had lived since the first family member crossed the mountains in his coonskin cap with a musket in hand and looked out and said this will be home.
As a boy I cherished any attention that my grandmother gave me. On the rarest occasion her cracked tan skin tightened revealing a smile that could wake up the sun. I knew in those moments that she had found something within her soul that reached up and shook her from beneath the 70 years of struggle, pain, and loss that seem to blanket her in those days after she said goodbye to Grandpa Bill.
I still remember hearing Aunt Duck saying as I dropped the wood in the box next to the stove – “ Randy did a good job. Didn’t he do a good job.”
I looked over my shoulder to see my grandmother leaning now in the doorway between the living room and her and Aunt Duck’s bedroom. The pale blue curtain that separated the rooms draped over her shoulder accenting the glimmer in her eyes as my mother opened the stove door and placed a log inside. Although it slipped away quickly like the heat gained on your warm side once turned from the stove, but for a moment, on her wearied face was a smile.
I don’t know if was having a little one trying to make his way in her world that drew her out or if in the flame of the stove she saw remnants of a memory in which she lost herself.
But for that moment for me, it was what I needed to see before crawling under 30 pounds of quilts in the back room bed and watching my breath rise above me. I moved my legs trying to warm the bed only to feel colder while all the time praying that I would not have a need to run to the outhouse.
My recent experience of struggling each day to work my way back from a hip injury is giving me such an amazing respect for the profession of physical therapy and the process the put the patient through to awaken the various muscles back into performing their previous automatic duties. The experience made me reflect on a story of the tenacity of my grandfather and inspires me each day to press on.
The leaf swayed hanging on to the lonely limb tightly. As if, to say to the world “I am not done and you are not going to make me fall down no matter what you throw at me.” All of its fellow leaves had given up the ghost blowing in whatever direction the wind desired them to go. Some managed to find a resting place at the foot of the majestic oak tree to spend the winter becoming the woodland blanket upon which the rain would fall before soaking into the ground.
My Grandad sat quietly on the porch staring at the leave bobbing in the wind.
He had come back from a tremendous stroke that took the wind from his earthly sails. The man who seemed would not bend to nothing could now barely lift himself from the chair in which he sat.
On this fall day though spying that lone leaf seemed to fortify him more than anything that anyone had to bolster his spirits. He stared endlessly watching its fight and as the fight struggled on from one day to two, to a week, his personal strength seemed to grow.
He managed each day no matter how the wind blew or what elements forced themselves past the mountain homestead, he walked himself out to the porch to spend some time sitting, later leaning against the porch post, and then standing as upright as the years would allow. He was always looking off towards the oak tree and its one hold out to the whims of the world saying nothing that revealed the focus of his internal thoughts.
As the winter came on strong, he would rise up and with his cane in hand, he eventually walked off the porch and towards that mighty oak tree going as far as he felt comfortable then returning to the porch. With each trip he got closer to his goal and he soon reached the tree looking straight up towards the hanging leaf.
There were a few times he would take one hand lean against the trunk of the tree and with the other lift his cane as far as he could trying to hit the leaf that centered his focus. He was just shy of reaching it and he would eventually tire and return to the warmth of the fireplace inside.
The light covering of snow did not even dissuade him to making his trek to the oak and returning home and with each passing day he grew stronger.
By the first signs of spring, he no longer limited his walking to just the tree and he was taken on even more of the activities that made his day sing around the farm.
It was on a spring day that the tree had refilled all its limbs and the greenery made it full and majestic. Grandad could no longer see the lone leaf from the porch so he decided to make another trek to see what had become of his now old companion who he fought alongside against the world’s elements.
As he reached the tree, he looked upon the ground to find it to no avail so he turned his gaze upward and amongst the lush green leaves there it was – one brown leaf still holding on to its place amidst the green youngsters around it.
Grandad’s face seemed to change as his face fought back the effects of the stroke moved to show a smile.
He raised his cane, almost in a sense of a salute to the lone leaf, then turned and walked down the trail towards the valley store. Emboldened by the lone leaf, he was figuring to hold on to his place in the world and stand as the man he was inside, no matter what nature threw against him.
We need more people in this world who work to overcome what they face finding the inner strength that God placed within each of His creations.
I am sitting on experience overload as we all are dealing with the nationwide pandemic shutdown and my local region is reeling due to tornadoes and flooding. So, I am turning us to a bit of levity to raise the spirits:
My great Uncle Dud Doolittle was an entrepreneur extraordinaire who operated the little general store at Flintville Crossroads.
Now Uncle Dud was as swift as could be. He stood about five-foot-five and was wiry as a well-strung bed frame.
His circular Ben Franklin spectacles offset his gray hair, and he was seldom seen outside his wool, dark green-striped suit and favorite gray beaver hat.
When working in the store, he also wore a black visor on his head that looked odd because it made his bald spot shine as he worked below the store’s light bulb.
With the variety of folks who made his store a regular place to be, he was always finding himself in unique and unusual situations.
Folks were always eager to give a hand, especially Cousin Clara who made a drop by the store a daily ritual.
It was a quiet Friday afternoon in July of 1948. Uncle Dud stood on a rickety wooden ladder putting a shipment of canned peaches in his favorite pyramid display. As he drew his task to close Cousin Clara came in saying, “Sure is hot out there.”
She noticed a can lying below the ladder so she walked over and stepped under the ladder to pick it up. As she raised up, she knocked over the ladder sending Uncle Dud to the floor.
“Doggoned it,” Dud said. “I told you before to stay away from that ladder. Don’t you know it is bad luck to walk under a ladder?”
“I didn’t know you were superstitious,” Clara said.
“About the only time I am superstitious is when somebody like you walks under a ladder and deliberately sends me to the ground,” he said.
“Do you believe it is seven years bad luck to break a mirror?” Clara asked.
“No sireee! My Uncle Corn Walter broke a mirror, and he did not have a bit of bad luck,” Dud said.
“Why didn’t he?” Clara asked.
“He got bit by a rattlesnake and died two days later,” he said.
Throughout the conversation, Dud remained as he had landed on the floor — standing on his head.
“Why are you still like that?” she asked.
“When I stand on my head the blood rushes to my head, but when I stand on my feet the blood don’t seem to rush to my feet,” Dud said. “I didn’t know why, so I wanted to just stay here and think about it a minute or two.”
“Why, that’s easy to figure out in your case Uncle Dud,” Clara said. “Blood can’t go in to your feets because your feets are full, but it can go into your head cause your head’s empty.”
(The characters of Uncle Dud Doolittle and Cousin Clara are the property of Peach Picked Publishing in association with Katona Publishing and are used by permission.)
When I was just a little boy on the farm, I spent much of my time fascinated by the baby animals — a young colt, a calf, baby chicks and ducklings.
When I was big enough, my grandmother said it was time I had my very own chicken.
Since becoming an adult, I have learned to appreciate the importance of chicken — fried chicken, baked chicken, chicken fricassee or chicken casserole. While traveling as a singer from church to church, you can’t help but become accustomed to it. Everywhere you go some nice lady always comes with a great big platter of Southern fried chicken for you to eat.
But as a child, I had not really connected the fact that little baby chicks grow up to be dinner.
Since we lived in the suburbs of Atlanta, Grandma said when I was ready she would give me three eggs and hopefully one would hatch.
To get ready, we had to order an incubator by mail to replace the warmth of the hen. The little yellow hatchery looked like a small spaceship.
After getting set up, Grandma picked out three eggs for me on our next trip to the farm. I remember coming in each day and gently turning the eggs so they would be heated evenly on both sides from the bulb in the bottom.
I watched those little eggs patiently, knowing that one day soon I would have my very own baby chick.
After a while, two of the three eggs decided it was time to get out of that spaceship and began to break through the egg.
I will never forget my excitement as each little yellow being came into a new world. Of course, for me it was hard to tell what they were going to be when they grew up. With the names I gave them, “Roscoe” and “King,” it worked out well since they both turned out to be roosters.
I did my best with the help of my folks to nurse those little chicks into adulthood.
They stayed in a little box in the kitchen and were fed and watered until they got big enough to go outside.
In our back yard, they made friends with my dog “Track,” and the trio had a fine old time running about. Of course, I think Track had more fun than Roscoe and King. He always seemed to be doing the chasing.
I am sure the neighbors were not overjoyed by the addition of the chickens to our subdivision, but as long as they were quiet, the chickens were welcome.
As roosters will, eventually they began to raise the sun with their crowing.
While we never had any complaints, I know the neighbors would eventually tire from their early morning alarms. So, Roscoe and King got to go on a trip to Grandma’s farm.
It was tough to let them go, but I did, and they seemed much happier running around the barn yard with all the other chickens.
I did get to visit them from time to time. Of course, I did receive some ribbing from my aunt Bessie in her letters on how good they were at last Sunday’s dinner.
It was much later when my mother Pearl and her friends, Mary Burgess and Nettie Fischer, decided that they would cut some corners and save money on the food budget. They decided to buy a bunch of chickens for a dime a piece, kill and clean them and put them in the freezer so we would have plenty to eat. As a little kid, I watched all the hard work the ladies put into this process. I watched as the chickens did their dance as they lost their heads. After seeing the little critters running around the yard, I just did not have the heart to eat a one of them. I guess I just pictured them as being Roscoe and King.
The experience taught me a tremendous amount about the responsibility of taking care of little ones. Perhaps the same is true of people.
Wouldn’t it be a nice world if everyone realized the importance of providing constant care and guidance to their little ones until they can run with the other big people and take care of themselves?
The importance of one’s family connections is something that I believe we are losing in America.
With each generation there are fewer individuals who live close to their extended families, unlike the days when grandma and grandpa lived just in the next room or uncles, aunts and cousins were a short walk down the road.
Many Americans today do not really know the members of their extended family. We spend a few awkward moments together at funerals, family reunions, Christmas and Thanksgiving gatherings and then off we go back to our own lives.
As families build lives miles away from their home many grasp the anonymity of their new surroundings with fervor, often dreading when a distant family member might drop in, disrupting their lives.
Despite the fact that my parents chose to move away from their homes to build a life for themselves in Atlanta, I grew up in a home where our door was open to members of both my mother’s and father’s families. It was not unusual for there to be cousins stretched out on quilted pallets sleeping on the living room floor; uncles rummaging through the refrigerator for green dill pickles as a late night snack; aunts blanching red tomatoes from the garden in the kitchen; or distant kin moving in for an extended stay while they looked for a job or planned a new start.
Because of the time I spent with these people growing up, I feel a much closer connection to them; the shared experiences make chance meetings and gatherings less of a strain today.
It was not unusual for my Mom to get up and start cooking a batch of turnip greens, cornbread and some fried chicken, while cleaning the house from end to end. When asked why she was doing it, she would say “so and so” will be here directly. Sure enough, after a while they would knock at the door. My Mom has a second sense about that. With no forewarning she knew some relative was on their way.
Sundays were a big visiting day. It was not unusual for Uncle Harvey, Aunt Lois and all their kids to load up in the car and be knocking at our door before dinner. Sometimes Grandma Allie and Grandpa Jesse would come along for the ride.
Us cousins would spend the afternoon playing as the folks caught up on all the family news. We might ride over to the airport to watch the planes land or go downtown to sight see. We would eat dinner, and then whomever was visiting would load up in the car and head back up to the mountains of Georgia or Tennessee.
I remember one trip when Uncle Harvey and family came down to see Joe Don Baker in “Walking Tall.” Of course, us kids were not old enough to go to the drive-in and see it so we had a sleepover instead, while most of the adults took in the hit movie.
Just like their visits there, we also visited regularly. Despite the distance it was like we were one family experiencing life together rather than living separate lives and putting up with one another for a few hours at the holidays.
God has called many of those family members for an extended stay at his house. While they are absent here, the experiences still live within me, giving me a sense of the extended family even if there are fewer of them now on this side than there once was.
The stories they told of relatives I never knew made those people alive to me. Through those stories many of my characters come to life on the page in columns and in scripts.
As each holiday rolls by, take the time to experience more than just the ordinary. Help create an experience that will last for yourself and your children throughout the lifetime. It is the shared moments of life that will make the basis for what we know as family.
If we as a country do not work to strengthen our families individually, what will the future hold for the American family as a whole? I guess we will be a country of individuals seeking a group in which to belong. We can only hope those groups aren’t exclusively on social media.
A few months back I met a new friend at a political rally, when I heard the name, I found myself just having to share with him that unfortunately, we could not be friends because we were feudin’.
The young man, of course, had no clue of what I was talking about, so I went on to share a bit about my family history and one of the many historical feuds within the family tree.
When we hear the words family feud, we think of the game show, but in many areas of the mountains the words had a much more serious and sometimes violent meaning. Folks around the world have heard of the Hatfield and McCoy Feud but what about the Swafford Tollett Feud?
I have written many a column about the idyllic happenings of my mother and grandparents in the valley below the Gravelly Spur Mountain. The now peaceful Sequatchie Valley north of Pikeville, Tennessee was the scene that a feud carried on from the Civil War until the 1890s and by some accounts truly did not completely end until the Great Depression.
Many years ago, I met a distant cousin, the late cousin Thomas V. Swafford who had written a book entitled “The Swafford-Tollett Feud.” I learned so much from he and his book shooting straight about the good and the bad, the positive and the negatives of more than 50 years of ill will, court battles, moonshining, gun fights, beatings, burnings and intimidation.
Swafford said in 2007 that many might not wish the stories told.
“A few people may say this book should have not been written,” he said. “They may say it opens old wounds and even that should be swept under the rug and hidden from future generations.”
Several in the previous generation probably preferred to let the tales die in the dust and be washed away by time. That is understandable, many of us prefer to gloss over the misdeeds of those behind us and polish the tarnished memories away.
At the root of the feud is often what we see in the movies and on television, money, revenge, property rights, and even a difference in beliefs. Swafford’s research points many of the early differences to one family aligning with the Confederacy and the other aligning with the Union. What makes it more difficult is the families were intermarried so cousins were feuding with cousins.
Some tales credit the beginning of the feud to be the 1863 murder of John Tollett, Jr., 72, who was tortured and killed by raiders supporting the North during the Civil War of which Aaron Swafford was believed to be amongst. Tollett was said to have a large amount of gold stored away and the raiders tried to make him give it up.
From this one Civil War period murder came decades of fighting.
I could tell you about the big election shoot out led by the Tolletts against the Swaffords and how many people were killed and injured or the logging incident lead by the Swaffords against the Tolletts.
There were many others featured in the book that show the violence moving from one generation to another and affecting other valley families and the law as it begins to take a more active role in trying to control some of the unruly behavior of its participants or their descendants right up into the Great Depression.
Of course, feuding killing wasn’t like regular murder in those days. Swafford quoted one lawyer’s comment that: we take into account whether the victim deserved killing, when he was asked why so many murders go unpunished.
It apparently was very difficult to yield a guilty verdict when the death occurred between two well-known feuding families.
Swafford wrote back then that “I am happy to report today the Tolletts and Swaffords are not only neighbors they are truly friends,” he said.
Personally, I was glad to hear this from my distant cousin. You see I am neither a Tollett nor a Swafford descendant, but I am cousins with both families with our family leaning towards the Tollett side in the feud as best I can tell. Those old suspicions and distrust flowed so deeply into the family beliefs, even I knew of them as a boy and was cautioned as a man to be cautious of dealings with the other family. I really never understood exactly why until I read his book because the stories were kept quiet. I was glad to bury the old feud in my mind by learning more but it never hurts to remind folks that it happened, so we can learn not to repeat the old mistakes. I am pleased to say, my new friend and I didn’t restart it either.
Besides, I only have one bullet in my shirt pocket left from “In the Heat of the Night,” no need to waste it a feudin’ — you never know when Bubba might need a hand again.
