Journeying On

Jim Brittain, Jere Brittain

Description

Journeying On is a collection of essays, poems. and songs about Mills River, North Carolina, by sixth-generation natives Jere Brittain and his late brother, Jim Brittain. Jere is professor emeritus of horticulture, Clemson University; Jim was professor emeritus of history, Georgia Tech. Many of Jere's essays were published as columns by the Hendersonville Lightning; Jim's essays were published in the Town of Mills River Newsletter.

Sujets

• Histoire
• State
• South
• United States
• History
• Local

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 14 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456639730
• Langue: English

Extrait

Journeying On
 
by
Jere Brittain
and
Jim Brittain
Copyright 2022 Jere Brittain,
All rights reserved.
 
 
Formatted, Converted, and Distributed by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-3972-3 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-3973-0 (ebook)
 
 
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Contents
Introduction and Acknowledgements
Back in the Day
Tiny Homes and Mega Homes in Mills River; A Study in Contrasts
Thoughts while walking through a heritage corridor of South Mills River
Steve and Judy Revis—Helping Haitians for Forty Years
School Size Matters
Shipwrecked in Upper Mills River
Rush Hour in Upper Mills River
Shotgun in the Space Station
Pete and Lee and the Coon Hunt
Man Bites Snake
The Corpenings of Mills River
Old Family Cemeteries are Complicated Places
Something Old, Something New
Mills River Presbyterian Church Celebrates Birthday
Who Was Mac McGough?
Log Cabin Lore
John Hollamon’s Boys
Katie and the Fawn
Heirloom Vegetables Meet Modern Technology in Mills River
How to Eat an Apple
A Forge Mountain Woman
How ‘Bout Them Tigers!
The Charles Webster Affair
Chestnut Log
Crank ‘Em Up Boys
Damn the TVA
Davenport’s Store
You’re Akin to Me
Forge Mountain Woman
Father’s Day
“Honest Ta Goodness…Thes es et”
Lick Skillet
Maytag Man
Kaitlin’s Joy
Pick Up Sticks
Sole Mates
Splash Dams
Old Gold and Brandy
To an Older Brother
Nantahala Bound (May be sung to Jere’s tune, “Fathers’ Day”)
JUST ME FER IT
A Tale of Two Brave Women
Biltmore
Doc Betts
Down at Sycamore Church
October
Sweet Donegal
Meeting a Vietnam Hero
An American Hero
Waylon McAbee-Coon Hunter
Spring Tonic
It’s About Time
Beefalo, Baseball, and Beer at Horse Shoe
Davenport’s Store (2004)
The Dam Fighters (2005)
Hendersonville Water Supply
Cemeteries
CCC Camps
Party Lines and Early Radio (2006)
Carr Lumber Logging Railroad
Sitton Iron Forge
Doc Greenwood
Mountain View, Shanghai, Maple Gap Schools (2007)
Dairy Farming and Churning
Vanderbilts and Pisgah National Forest
Grist Mills and Sawmills
Mills River Academy-Early Brittains (2008)
Splash Dams
Walton War-James Brittain
Wilderness Hunts-Buckspring Lodge
Mullinax Family (2009)
Farming During WWII
Gillespie Rifles
Old Corn Varieties
Food Preservation (2010)
Minnie Gillespie- Quilts and Bedspreads
A Secessionist Movement in Mills River
Crosscut Saw (2011)
Fences (2012)
Footlogs and Fords
Gladiolus Farming
Trails
Early Schools (2013)
Field Family
Plane Crashes
Spring Water
A Man Named X Ray (2014)
Christmas Trees
River Rocks and Quarries
School Teachers-Jordan Sisters
Early Washing Machines
Darwinism Controversy at Mills River School (2015)
Family Reunion-Uncle Henry
Pisgah National Forest-Big Creek Area
Ramp Patch-Hiking and Biking
The Rickman Family (2016)
A Refugee-Hermitage House-The Burgin Family
Whitaker Family (2017)
The Bryson Family
The Moore Family
A Mills River Treasure
American Heroism in WWII-Part Two
We’ll Pay for This
Velma Gillespie Brittain’s Memoir
 
Introduction and Acknowledgements
Jere and Joanne Brittain have been Journeying On together for 68 years. In the cover photo by Larry Ketron, Jere is wearing the “ battle scarf ” of the Upper French Broad Defense Association (UFBDA). Fifty years ago, Jere and Joanne led the UFBDA in its defeat of a Tennessee Valley Authority plan to build 14 dams and reservoirs on tributaries of the Upper French Broad River, beginning with their home valley, Mills River. For more detail on this battle, see David Weintraub ’ s excellent video, Troubled Waters (Center for Cultural Preservation), or James E. Brittain ’ s Gunfights, Dam Sites, and Water Rights .
This collection of essays, poems, and songs is primarily based on Jere ’ s columns in the Hendersonville Lightning , West of the French Broad. Thanks to Bill Moss, publisher, for his support and encouragement. My late brother Jim Brittain ’ s (1931-2018) History Corner essays were previously published in the Town of Mills River Newsletter. Thanks to the town and to Jo Ann Layne Brittain for permission to include these essays.
Special thanks to Dr. Bo Bennett for his assistance in assembling Journeying On from the fragments I gave him.
Journeying On is dedicated to our family and friends, past and present and near and far.
Mills River Boy
My Brittain, Gillespie, Rickman, and Sitton ancestors arrived in the Mills River valley with the first wave of European settlers in the late 1700s. They were prominent in the early community, playing leadership roles in local government, education, rural commerce, and churches. James Brittain and Jesse Rickman were veterans of the American Revolution; the Sittons and Gillespies were iron and long rifle makers. All were farmers in those early days. Only recently (2014), I discovered that my great-great-grandmother, Jane Fletcher Orr, wife of George Orr, was Cherokee. This kinship to practically all the early families in Mills River is the subject of my song, Family Tree.
The setting for my first experiences in agriculture was a ninety-acre subsistence farm at the confluence of North and South Mills River in Western North Carolina. Six months following my birth in 1935, Randall and Velma Gillespie Brittain loaded my four-year-old brother Jim and me and their few belongings on a two-horse wagon, forded North Mills River, and moved into our new, north-facing, “ sawmill ” four room house. They left behind one of the nicer two-story, south-facing homes in the neighborhood as a result of the settlement of William Alonzo Brittain ’ s estate. The circumstances surrounding their leaving a very comfortable, established house for a rustic cottage remains a shrouded family mystery.
It is difficult to overstate the significance of south-facing versus north-facing home sites in the southern Appalachians. During the short days of winter, sunny day high temperatures on southern exposures are about ten degrees warmer than northern, with the added advantage of more shelter from the fierce north winds. Day length on the north sides are typically at least one hour shorter than on the south sides of hills and mountains. Not surprisingly, my earliest memories of childhood involve feeling cold. The little house had beaded interior walls and ceilings in the kitchen and living room, but the two bedrooms had no ceiling; one could look right up to the metal roof from the beds. There was no insulation even in the ceilinged areas. I have vivid memories of running across the cold bedroom floor to finish dressing beside the warm wood-fueled cook stove that Mom had kindled well before daybreak.
The house had no electricity. A galvanized pipe provided cold, gravity-fed spring water to a kitchen basin and to a concrete trough in the corner of the back porch. The trough held two levels of cold water for cooling milk, butter, etc. Occasionally, a captured trout would swim among the milk crocks until it grew so large that its tail splashes began to contaminate the milk, whereupon my mother would serve it for supper.
Water was heated in pots on the cook stove or wood-fired heater for dish washing or bathing in a small or large galvanized tub. Water for washing clothes was often heated in a large cast iron wash pot out by the woodpile. Mom scrubbed the clothes on a washboard leaning inside a washtub, rinsed in cold water in another tub, wrung the water from the clothes by hand, and hung the wash on a clothesline, provided the sun was shining. On cloudy or rainy wash days, the clothes would dry around the stove and heater.
The rustic privy was about 75 yards from the house and stocked with rough paper or corn cobs that were not your soft Charmin. Cold wind in winter and wasps or spiders in summer minimized waiting time for a seat.
I believe my first memory is of the commotion around the house when my sister, JoAn, arrived. I would have been two years and three months old. A second milestone memory is the arrival of electricity from the Duke Energy grid when I was about five (1940). The original electrical wiring consisted of bare ceiling lights operated by string switches and single wall outlets in the kitchen and living room. This seemed like nothing less than a miracle. Electrical appliances came slowly due to our very limited household income. First a tiny Sears Roebuck mail-order radio for listening to the war news, a few years later a Maytag wringer washing machine, and a wonderful little refrigerator well after the war. It is impossible to overstate the revolutionary impact of electricity in relieving some of the drudgery for rural women. My mother described it in her short memoir.
The household and farm economy was almost cashless in those days. A small walk-in brooder house with a compacted dirt floor and wood heater was home to several dozen baby chicks. Pullets would graduate to the hen house and provide eggs for sale or barter for groceries. Young roosters enhanced Sunday dinners. A pig was raised and fattened on table scraps and corn, slaughtered in late fall, and preserved by canning or salting-down in a wooden box following a few days of hog-killing feast. A few cows provided milk, butter, cottage cheese, and an occasional calf to fatten and sell.
Life on this little hill farm was straight out of the nineteenth century. The key to survival was corn grown on the seven acres of fertile bottomland at the “ forks ” of the river. The soil was turned by a borrowed team of horses, planted with seeds saved from the previous year ’ s crop, cultivated with a “ Horse named Charlie, ” and hoed three or four times by the