Once.

Country Gent!

My great-grandmother, Julia Arledge Williams, was also a midwife (licensed). Some say she delivered 100 babies and lost one. Others say 200.

My Aunt Faye has her "black leather doctors bag", which I have seen and perused.
It is FULL of "herbal remedies" as well as the normal stuff like eye-drops for new-borns.

Those "folks" knew more about "keepin alive" and healthy than these "smart ----- doctors do today....(Take this "pill, son.)

I DON"T like "turnips" or "turnip greens", (love garlic!) But I know these are healthy things!

Maybe, for me, ask the park service about any details on the grave of William Constant on the park ground?

HOOray for YOU and YOUR attitude! Polk County, NC is now FULL of rich yankees with "Gentlemen horse farms and golf courses." (I don't remember those folks even KNOWING what a golf-course was!

Great smoked hams, though! AND some superb "white-likker"!

Best Regards,
Bruce

bumping.... I miss Country Gent.

Just yesterday, while driving up the highway past where I grew up, right there a couple hundred yards up the road from our old driveway was a newly graded subdivision entrance road (with Gatehouse under construction) into the 400 acre tract I hunted as a teenager. The 400 acres is private land that adjoins a large tract of national forest land (Pisgah NF, McDowell County). It seems the developers in WNC are focusing on fragmenting all the private lands adjoining or inheld within the national forest lands.

My father had the opportunity in 1967 to purchase that tract of land for $7500. He thought it was too much.

Now 10 times $7500 will not buy a 3/4 acre lot in that new development.

__________________
Population keeps on breeding
Nation bleeding, still more feeding economy
Life is funny, skies are sunny
Bees make honey, who needs money, monopoly
...
World pollution is no solution

I know just what you mean.

There are still those places that reflect the peace and beauty of our long gone neighborhoods- i intend to find one.

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Wherever you go, there you are. Buckaroo Banzai

well, where is country gent these days?

if he lives in swain county i have some suggestions of where he can go. now that the northshore road has been declared permanently dead (yayyyyy!!!!) the area is still quite remote and rugged- one of the very few untouched areas bordering the national park.

it is also still possible to hike back into the GSMNP and fish for native trout, if you know where to look.

I don't have any close neighbors. I can walk out my front door, cross the creek during low water, and there's nothing between here and the ocean - 30 miles of wilderness. Thankfully this is where my children have grown up. My 18 yr old son still takes off daily to tramp in the woods, in all kinds of weather, with nothing but his gun, his knife, and his pocket fire starter. We can fish from the river for both salmon, steelhead, and cut throat, hunt nearly any species of bird or mammal, and never hear car sounds (county road is a mile away, but it's only used by locals - dead ends 5 miles past my place). There's still plenty of wilderness in the west.

I wanna go back too.


This was the way it was even back in the 1980s, back where I come from.

Soon as I finished my bowl of cereal, I was out the door. Playing in the dirt, riding my bike, walking up to meet my best friend (and cousin- we're ALL related in the south- ya know) and we'd play around, all day.
Catchin' crawdads in the creek, carving our names in the buckeye tree, going to the pool at the motel where her mom worked was a BIG thing. Playing in the old ambulance back that my dad bought for me for a playhouse. Making cookies in her kitchen, making messes in my bedroom making houses out of little golden books. Calling people by using just the last four digits of their phone numbers, losing phone service and electricity when it flooded, my mamaw working at the cafeteria at my elementary school- GOOD cooking there. Watching mamaw and her friends slipping extra food to the kids they knew went without at home.... knowing the teachers in school personally, and that you could go to them with any problems and they truely LISTENED and helped... getting a ride from one of our moms to the schoolyard so we could ride bikes without getting our teeth jarred out by the gravels.....

Things got too 'improved' back there and my family packed us up and ran to TN. Things in Tn are too 'improved' now- can't afford the property we want 'cause they're developing every square inch of land and it's all priced outta sight. Couldn't breathe here anyways, thanks COPD. I dread this summer. And I want my kids to grow up RIGHT.

Anyone ever seen the M. Knight Shamalan (sp) movie The Village? Forget the ending.... sometimes I wanna do what those folks did.


Charaty

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" It's better to ride even if you get thrown, than to wind up just wishin' ya had."

Chris Ledoux

What a price we all paid and everyone after us will pay for the dam that flooded the valley to make life better for everyone, for that four lane highway that will take us to see that dam much faster or to that golf course where once was a dairy with the greenest grass and a hundred black and white cows or the meadow where deer were not afraid to feed in broad daylight, is now a shopping center,the lake, where ripples from a bluegill catching a bug seemed to travel from shore to shore can no longer be seen for boat traffic or A factory where you can make enough money you can have a house on the lake,be a member of the golf course, go shopping at the mall or go bass fishing in your bass boat. If I could change just one thing about "this better life we now have" It would be that four lane highway changed back to a one lane dirt road. Hopefully traveling that old road would be slow enough that I would'nt see all the sights "they say makes life better for us all" and maybe just maybe If Im traveling slow enough, I may see a few "they say that dosen't". Eddie

That was beautiful, Country Gent and Chickenista....great memories of a time that's quickly dissappearing...

Has anyone noticed that fireflies are getting rare too? I read someplace that they don't live where it doesn't get really dark at night, and with so many cities and suburbs lit up at night they've died off.

D.B. Cooper would recommend the Pacific northwest to go for an extended stay in the woods.

I wonder about this because I am currently in upstate NY smack dab in the middle of the city on a 60x106 lot and we have literally tons here! So much so that I actually commented about it this past summer.

This thread made me teary-eyed,too. While I grew up in the city I had the experience of living in the backwoods of Northern Idaho and know the feeling exactly. I miss it so much.

Just before we left 3 years ago an old mountain man neighbor of ours (in his late 50s, maybe early 60s) who lived in a 16x20 shack on his 60 acres next to us said probably the most widomatic thing I've ever heard. He asked how long we had been there and we said about 5 years. He looked around (we were standing on our land), shook his head, and said, "Yup, that's gonna be tough." Of course, as with all words of wisdom, you don't know how truly wisdomatic they are until years later. We brushed it off and said we'd adjust to which he shook his head again and said "You'll see. These mountains have a way of grabbin' hold of a person and not wantin' to let go." Three years later and we understand now exactly what he was talking about. We go about our lives here in the city but those mountains will always call to us.

Ok, think I'll go have a cry now....

As a child in the Midwest I have many of the same memories of time gone. This has all ways been a farming area but back then still many of the farmers still used horses for the day to day work. They were big and very gentle and us kid would go out to the pasture and ride them around . No need for a bridle a string would do.There were hundreds of acres of woods all around and we would spend the summer months playing in them. You could wade in the creeks and catch minnes if you were quick enough. We helped in the garden and with taking care of the livestock and it was life is great. Yes indeed the Bob Whites were around then . My Grandad wouldn't let the hunters shoot them he said they helped keep the bugs and weed seeds et up. The fence rows were allowed to grow out like hedges. Was a good place for the other birds and animals. We hunted mostly squirrels and rabbits. For deer we went to the Mississippi River bottoms in th fall of the year. We fished a lot there in those days. The fish were still safe to eat then. The roads were mostly dirt some of them gravel there was one narrow blacktop that ran through the area in those days and we used to refer to it as the hard road. We ran around barefoot all summer and got a new pair of shoes for school come fall. We raised and butchered our own hogs and a steer every fall. Caned and persevered the meat. Had a smoke house out back and smoked our own bacon and hams. Also fish. We would go to the river and for a dollar we could get enough fish to fill a ten gallon milk bucket. We bought them because we would want lots of them all at once. We bought them from a man by the name of Buck. He and his wife and other familey members lived in a large house boat near the river. The house boat was set up on poles and if the river flooded real high some years, not to worry it would just float till the water went down. There were several families that lived like that in those days. Some folks referred to them as river rats. They fished in the summer and hunted and trapped in the fall and winter. No more, all gone . I recall going out in the woods and finding the little white dutch mans breeches flowers and wild woods violets and columbines we called them honeysuckles which were different that the honeysuckles vines that grew on the fence \by my grandmothers yard . We lived near to many of our relations seemed like everyone I knew was Uncle, Aunt, Cousin. Going to town was a big deal. Dad would give us a dime each to spend as we liked. Went to the Dime Store and they had candy in big glass cases and the lady behind the counter would scoop it out into a little white bag.

Yep, just thinking about the lost freedom and tranquilness makes me wanna cry. Now there is a subdivision, golfing community or trailer park everywhere you turn around here. Very sad indeed. My fondest memory was picking wild blackberries when I was young. The only thing that there was to worry about were tics and black snakes.

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Mom of Michael (19), David (18),Anthony (14) and James Oscar R.I.P. February 23, 2008
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i took off a couple of times when i was a kid, well teenager, gone from morning till after dark summer or winter on snowshoes slept out a couple of times mostly i watched, listened, and thought. im lucky there are more people here now than when i was a kid and they have spread out but i can still walk for about 10 or 15 minutes and be in deep brush and can keep going, as long as my knee and foot will let me LOL just slower now.


dean

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Hope is something you give yourself in your darkest moments, this is the true meaning of selfreliance.

greetings from the far east of the western world

Has anyone noticed that fireflies are getting rare too? I read someplace that they don't live where it doesn't get really dark at night, and with so many cities and suburbs lit up at night they've died off.[/QUOTE]

Now, where we just moved from in Madison County, NC there were fireflies!~
I have never seen such fireflies. We lived..not exactly in a holler...more like between the toes of the foot of the mountain. There was a bit of a valley where a creek ran and pastures grew between the rises on each side. Our rental was on one of the sides of the rise looking across the pasture and up the other rise.
The fireflies would start down in the pasture grasses and as the night got deeper they would move up into the trees.
By midnight it was like being in a stadium at a rock concert with flashbulbs just a going. ..lights twinkling all the way up to the sky. I mean, there were millions of them. I have never seen the like and probably never will again.
Truly beautiful!

I'm so glad the fireflies are alive and well in some areas...when we live in Connecticut they were around but not like when I was kid. We moved to North Carolina last August in the middle of a drought, and there were none. My inlaws in Ohio still have them, but I was worried about them disappearing.