On Dogwood Mountain

© 2012 Betty L.Carter. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 1/26/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4685-4393-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-4391-9 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-4392-6 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012901065

Book Cover Design: by Daniel J. Carter

Pencil Sketches by: Betty L. Carter

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and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Chapter 1

1941

Welcome to our Mountain

Chapter 2

Big’un likes Dorse

Chapter 3

Wilburn Goes Off to War

Chapter 4

Little Orn is Born

Chapter 5

AW, Paps a Coming

Chapter 6

Letters Home 1942

Chapter 7

Sunday Meetings

Chapter 8

Christmas Day

Chapter 9

1943 Plowing the Garden

Chapter 10

The War Hits Home on Our Mountain 

Chapter 11

I’m a Rideing That Mule!

Chapter 12

Charles Warren Dies

Chapter 13

Paps Girls

1944

Chapter 14

Eatings Scase

Chapter 15

Ever-things a Changing

Chapter 16

1945

Chapter 17

Mam is Now Gran-mam

Chapter 18

THE WAR IS OVER

Conclusion 1965

This book is dedicated to the sight, sounds, and smells of the ethereal, ever calming mountains where we go when we need refreshing to renew our spirits, connecting us with the Creator of the Universe. We live here, we work here, we just go deeper in for the renewing.

It works every time!

Our Family

Chapter 1

1941

Welcome to our Mountain

Mam! Ludie screamed out at the top of her lungs. Maammmeee. It was pitch black in the back room where us girls was trying to sleep. It startled me awake. My eyes popped wide open involuntarily. I knowed she was having the same old dream over again. No matter how many times it happens, it always startles me awake.

I turned over on my straw and corn husk mattress tick and yelled, Mam! Ludie’s a dreamin’ a-gin.

Mam was already up and moving across the room to Ludie’s bed. She fetched me such a quick slap that I peart near seed stars. Whew! I laid back down right quick.

Shet up, Rethie, She hissed, Ye’ll be the one to have the whole house awake a-bellerin’ at the top of ye lungs lack that.

I was closer than Mam realized I was, I knowed she didn’t aim to smack me that hard.

She moved silently over to the bed where Ludie and Molly and Belle slept. I heard her a cooing and crooning to Ludie, holding her and rocking her as she whispered love words. Belle’s three and bless her heart! She can sleep through a harri-can. She never even stirred. Her name is Mary Isabelle but Mam shortened it to Belle. Molly groaned and turned over on her belly.

I rolled over next to Corrie and pulled the kivvers up, leaving just my nose sticking out. The side of my face burned some from the slap but I slept like a log the rest of the night. So did Ludie, or anyways if she stirred, I never heard her.

At first light, Mam hollered us all out of our warm kivvers. Our two older brothers, Wilburn and Wess, was already out in the yard busting up stovewood to fuel the big black cook stove. With so many mouths to feed, Mam needed a lot of wood and help to get our breakfast started. Looks to me like she could have just got Dorse up and made her help, ‘stead of getting us all up. It aint that I’m extry lazy or anything like that…….jest love mornin’ sleep which I hardly ever get, for the flys a buzzing around my face or Mam a hollering at us to rise and shine one. Mams a early riser and she likes for us all to be early risers.

All Dorse liked to do is primp in that old piece of broke looking glass anyhow. When she turned fifteen at her birthday, she thought that made her all growed up and the boss over the rest of us. Well, she was already a woman and I was still waiting, but I knowed more in my thirteen years than she would probably ever know. I ain’t a saying that to be a smart alec. Ah, maybe I am a little.

Dorse is awful purty but she don’t think she is. She thinks she sees flaws where they aint none. She likes to think things over good before she speaks. Then she speaks soft. I let people know what I think right off. That way they haint no confusion.

Mam got Dorse started making gravy as she rolled out fresh stone ground whole wheat biscuits from hand to hand, buttering the tops as she laid them in the pan. Why, Wilburn can put away a half a dozen of them things hisself. We were lucky to have salt and baking powders and baking sody for the biscuits and corn bread, what with the war a going on and all.

Seemed to me like peart near everbody was a fighting everbody else all over the world. Thats all the mountain people ever talked about when they got together anyhow.

Mam had me fry a dozen eggs in a smokin’ hot cast iron skillet with a big dob of lard in it. Me or Corrie one gathered the eggs ever evening out of the decrepid old chicken house. It’s a good thing we got a lot of laying hens, they’s so many of us. Some for the eatin’ eggs, some for the varmints to catch and eat and then……once in a while, one for us to make Sunday dumplings out of. Them eggs in the frying pan sizzled and hissed as they browned slightly around the edges in the hot lard. I flipped them all over easy with a big tablespoon without breaking one yolk. They was all perfect if I did say so myself.

When we had extry eggs, we sold them to Mr. Priddy down at the settlement store for a nickel a dozen. We could get three cents a pound for the chickens at Priddys, too. Course, we hardly ever had enough chickens to do any bartering on them.

Corrie is ten and she’s a lot of help to Mam. I be fourteen here soon and Corrie be eleven. Molly’s eight and ruther be outside as anywheres else in the world. She’s turned just like Dorse. Purty little girl, but head in the clouds and flighty. Corrie’s more like me. Logical. Maybe it’s cause she was born on my birthday. I think me and her both is thoughty.

I like school good as the next’un and I’m already in the seventh grade. I don’t think the sixth or the seventh is as hard as the fifth was. I passed it but it shore was hard. Corrie’s in the fourth. I dread next year for her. But maybe it wont be so bad as it was for me since we got a different teacher now. Who yore teacher is makes a whole heap of difference in yore learnin’ experience, ye know.

Mollie’s in the first grade. She failed two years running. Can’t keep her mind on the classroom. Wants to watch butterflies out the window ruther than do her work. Dorse quit school in the seventh grade. She never got on to the ‘rithmatic the teacher tried to teach her.

She ruther be out picking wild flowers or laying on her back looking at the clouds in the sky anyhow. Wilburn only just went to the fifth grade and Wess went to the sixth. It wasn’t that they couldn’t do the work, Mam needed both of them at home.

Pap comes and goes. He comes and stays longer enough for Mam to get in the family way again and then he ups and leaves. Heads off the mountain as fast as he can go, peart near at a dead run. Aint unusual, he’s done that ever since I can remember and I can remember back a long ways, at least back to when I was three years old.

He got a wanderin’ spirit, is all Mam says. And then she has the next youngen with the granny woman mid-wife. Old Aunt Ide, what is the mid-wife here, lives further on up our mountain and up the other holler to where old Briney Bigelow lives. You turn off right for him on the old wagon road and left for her. But she don’t live nowhere nigh as far up the holler as he does. Her holler is named Turkey Trot. His’n is named Possum Holler. Good solid names. Lot of wild turkey and ‘possums in both their hollers.

They both live up there by theirself, taking care of what-ever crops they need to grow, double cropping ever summer on what cleared land they both had. Old Briney always grows a lot of corn. He’s somehow managed to clear several acres, the boys says, of hillside ground that he plants in corn. Them boys roam far and wide over the whole mountain. I aint never been back there myself.

We really live on Skillet Mountain in Southeastern Kentucky but Mam renamed our mountain ‘Dogwood Mountain’ just for us. That was ‘cause they was so many Dogwood trees that bloomed out real purty in the spring of the year. ‘Course, we still get our mail post marked Skillet Mountain, Kentucky. There’s purty Red Bud trees, too, but not nigh as many of them. It makes a body jest happy to be alive.

Mam told us the legend of the Dogwood tree, too. How Jesus was crucified on it and it was so ashamed over that, that it vowed it would never grow big enough nor straight enough for anybody to be crucified on it ever again.

The blooms are shaped like the cross and the reddish brown on each bloom stands for the blood of Christ. I pondered that ever spring as I admired all the zillions of white blooms. Peart near the whole mountain was white, with all the dogwood trees blooming. And when the wind blew the flowers off, the ground was paved in white petals, that looked almost like a snow. Red buds usually bloom first but once in a while, the redbuds and dogwoods bloom about the same time. That is almost more’n we can stand, they’re so purty. And the smell of the spring wind is enough to make a body swoon, it smells so fresh and good.

Pap’s been gone galivanting around several months now and it’s almost time to send Wilburn or Wess one out on the little red mule after Aunt Ide. She has her own little mare that she rides out when she needs to go off the mountain or when she’s needed for a birthing.

Aunt Ide has delivered most all of us. I think her Mam delivered Wilburn and maybe even Wess. Then when she passed over to the other side, Aunt Ide took over. She ain’t really our aunt but ever-body called her aunt so we did, too. She probably was kin to us somewheres down the line but I couldn’t tell ye where at.

Aunt Ide is a kind, knowing country woman who grows her own yarb remedies. Why, she has a yarb garden ‘sides her vegetable garden and gathers wild yarbs too. Anybody has anything wrong goes to Aunt Ide and she’ll usually make it better. Very seldom did we ever go off the mountain and into the county seat that had a city doctor. We didn’t have no need to, having her amongst us on the mountain. We was blessed to have her, I tell you.

Aunt Ide set bones, too. One time Wess fell out of a apple tree and broke his arm and she put it back in place.(Big brave Wess screamed like a girl and passed out.) She put a wide flat board behind it and plastered it with something. Then she put it in a clean white rag sling and told him not to move it, keep it dry and stay out of the creek for several weeks.

Well, he done it but he didn’t like staying out of Caney Branch for a month and a half but he had to. His arm healed as straight as yourn and mine. Ye couldn’t never even tell it had ever been broke, even if ye looked real close.

Aunt Ide knowed what she was a doing, allright. She pulled hurting teeth, too. Mam had two or three in the back that was nigh broke off at the gums. They hurt her considerable but Aunt Ide didn’t think she could get them out. One thing she did was to tell you if she didn’t think she could help you any. She’s honest as the day is long.

Mam set out some of Wess’s wild honey for the biscuits for breakfast. He was always traipsing around on the mountain. About ever summer he found a wild bee gum, too. He’d take little Red and go back and rob the hive, stupifying the bees with a little smoky fire so he wouldn’t get so many stings. He’d usually have all the honey he could carry back in.

All of us loved to chew on the honey comb. Wess seemed to think it was worth a few stings. I shore thought it was, course it wasn’t me with the red puffed up stings. Once in a while he robbed to early and they’d be little bee larva in the comb. He had to be careful when the time WAS just right and not go to deep or he’d pick up them little larva.

Now I couldn’t force myself to chew them. Took a long time to pull all them little buggers out. Then I could chew it. Couldn’t stand the thoughts of crunching baby bees between my teeth. Ugh!

Mam had cooked a big kettle of oatmeal for breakfast, too and sweetened it with the perfect dark yellow honey. No bee larva in here.

She yelled, Come and eat!

There was a stampede of barefoot youngens charging in to get around the table. Corrie, Molly, Ludie and Belle all set scrouged together behind the table on the long wood bench. Not much elbow room there.

Mam had already set the steaming bowls on the table but nobody moved to eat.

Wilburn and Wess washed up at the wash stand, then hung their bill caps up on the wall on a nail and set on the other side of the table. Wilburn set down at one end of the table and Wess set at the other end. Me and Dorse set on the other side from the girls.

Mam always poured Bessie’s milk for all the youngens that her or Wilburn one had milked out the night before and set in the spring house to cool. Old Bessies our piedy cow and almost as old as these here hills but she’s still the best milker around. More than a gallon and a half ever morning, a gallon and a half ever night. Takes most of it too for our bunch. We made buttermilk and fresh churned butter on what ever was left over.

Mam bought Bessie from old Mr. Priddy a year or two back for twelve dollars and fifty cents. She tried her best to get her for twelve but he wouldn’t budge. Even if Bessie was old, I allow she got a bargain at that.

Wilburn turned eighteen the thirtieth day of August and has already went and signed up for the draft. He’s old enough now to drive a car, if we could only afford one. Well, we probably couldn’t get gas for it nohow, on account of the war and all. Couldn’t drive it up the mountain, neither. Roads to dausted rough and rocky.

We’d have to park it down way down past Skillet Cemetery Road anyhow and walk on up. If we a gonna have to walk part of the way, might as well walk the whole way. Might be able to get it up to Uncle Johns, I don’t know. Be a awful lot of trouble to have one, is what I think. But then I love walking off our mountain. Walking back up’s a different story. It’s steep most all the way. Very few flat stretches.

Wess was sixteen in January and in a hurry to be eighteen. He says he’s a leaving and a joining the Army or the Marines one or tother when he gets eighteen. Mam stays tight-lipped. She knows if she objects, he’ll go that much faster so she don’t say much.

Mam made coffee for her and the boys. Dorse always gets her a tin cup of coffee, too and has since she turned fifteen. First time she got coffee, she slurped it big and she burnt her lips. I grinned in spite of myself. That’ll teach her to be sooo grown-up. She shot me a sorrowful look. Then I was sorry I grinned. You know how that is, I wouldn’t like somebody a grinning like a ‘possum at me if I’d burnt my lips on my first sip of coffee. Course I aint had a sip yet. Smells real good though. ‘Fore long I’ll get to taste it, I guess.

From December to January, Wess and Dorse is the same age but they ain’t twins. He was born the twenty third of January 1925 and she was born December second, 1925, same year. They ain’t much alike neither, in looks or actions.

Now, Mam glanced over at Corrie. That’s all she had to do and Corrie bowed her head and said, God is great, God is good, let us thank Him fer our food.

Then ever-body said, A-man, and commenced to passing the hot bowls. When ever-body had got a hot biscuit or two and dipped gravy out on them, then the eggs was passed around. Mam pulled her a chair up to the table next to me and Dorse and passed more of the heaping bowls around. She always set in the short chair that didn’t raise ye up enough to hardly reach the table. She was always reaching and dipping for the little’ns.

Belle said, Mam, I want open-the-bill.

Mam dipped her out some oatmeal. Belle loved the stuff and that’s what she called it.

Molly retch down and gently lifted up one skinny butt cheek. We all heard it. Wheet! It whizzed like a wire nail. Corrie groaned. She was the one setting next to Molly.

Molly blurted, I never knowed I was a gonna do that.

Corrie grouched, Why’d ye go and lift yer butt cheek up then?

Molly got red in the face and dropped her eyes to her plate and mopped up her gravy with her bread. Well, she knowed shore she WAS gonna do it, but what she didn’t know was that it to gonna be out loud.

Dorse had already finished eating and was at the wash stand where the broke mirror was. She combed her bobbed shiny black hair with the snaggle tooth comb. Then she run her fingers through it, letting it fall down over one eye. She eyed it critically.

She looked so much like Pap. He shore was a handsome man, with unusually bright blue eyes and lots of coal black hair. Dorse was purty as a doll. Boys from the mountain and from off was already coming around mostly on the pretense of seeing Wilburn and Wess but I knowed who it was they really wanted to see.

All of us had Paps blues eyes, excepting Wess. Belle had blondish red hair but she had Paps blue eyes. Wess had Mams dark red hair and gray eyes. Truth be told, I thank he was a little jealous of Wilburn with his black wavy hair and deep blue eyes.

Mam kept her long natural curly hair pulled back in what she called a rat tail. It wanted to frizz and curl up even more in damp weather.

Wilburn asked, Mam, reckon I ort to take some corn to Priddys store to be ground?

Mam answered, We do need a sack of corn and a sack of wheat both ground while yore at it. I’ll need some salt, and if ye can get it, a sack of pinto beans, oh! and a box of oatmeal fer these youngens. Git me what sugar ye can. I’d like to have a twenty five pound sack of white flour fer cakes, too. If ye get all that, little Red’ll be loaded fer bear. Might as well thow the saddle bags on him. He’ll not like it much but he wont buck ye off.

Wilburn knowed it would mean walking back up the mountain with a load that heavy.

It will turn into a whole days trip. Take him peart nigh a hour there and a hour and a half back. Families was scattered purty far apart but I knowed he’d be visiting with most of them and especially spending some time at the Jamisons.

He was good friends with Tug, the older boy there who the same age as him, then they was one nicknamed Big’un who was a little older than Wess, and Lonzo that was a little younger than Wess but I knowed the REAL reason he was a stopping. He was a courting Trudy, their oldest girl.

Her whole name was Gertrude but her Mam had shortened it. She was natural light blond headed and brown eyed. She was a real purty girl and I didn’t blame Wilburn for wanting to court her. Other boys come from off to court her but she never seemed to like none of them. Only had eyes for Wilbur.

It’ll probably be good dark when he comes in home but he can count on the little Red mule to carry him safely home with his small, shore steps. He saddled Red right away, kneeing him swiftly in the side so he wouldn’t hold his breath and puff out his sides, making the saddle loose. Then he flapped the saddlebags over him, too.

I seed him slip two pieces of bread in his shirt pocket. Mam got in her Jumbo peanut butter jar and pulled out a few dollar bills and some change. She counted it out to the penny. There was precious few dollar bills left.

This has to do us till ye Pap comes in. He’ll be here ‘fore long fer shore, and he’ll have money to do us then, Mam said as she handed the cash money to Wilburn.

He carefully placed it in his front pocket after searching his pockets for holes. Of course, there was none. Mam always patched any holes that appeared, soon as they come or had me or Corrie one to mend them.

Wilburn had already shelled the corn with the hand grinder so he anticipated getting to go today. He hung a big sack of corn and a big sack of wheat kernels tied together, one on one side and one on the other of the little mule. He slipped his bill cap on and then swung one leg over the mules back. Red sidestepped a little, then settled down. Wilburn clicked his tongue and twitched the reins.

Little Red took off at a slow steady trot. But I knowed he wouldn’t trot for long. Wilburn’d be lucky if he trotted out of sight. All us youngens stood out in the yard and watched them go. Shore ‘nough before he got around the first bend in the road, little Red had slowed to a rocking chair walk.

Wilburn turned around in the saddle at the last bend in the road and waved his red cap at us ‘cause he knowed we’d all be watching him go. Arms flew up ever-wheres as we all waved bye at him.

Belle cried. Didn’t take much to make Belle cry. She didn’t seem to realize he’d only be gone for the day. Dorse picked her up and soothed her, running her long, slim fingers through Belles curly hair, rubbing her back and crooning, Puttin’ some lotion on her feelin’s, rubbin’ some lotion on little bitty Belle’s feelin’s.

When Belle’s crying had turned to snubbs, Dorse kept on a holding and a petting her. We do the littlest ones like that. We always pet’m a lot. After all, they are only little once and another little’n would soon take their place. Aw, Dorse cares for us all but she is especially fond of the littlest ones.

Me and Corrie went to clean breakfast dishes up. Only thing I dread is the oatmeal pot. Don’t mind the egg skillet. Don’t dread the biscuit pans. Don’t even dread the sticky gravy skillet, but I dreaded the oatmeal pot like ever-thing. That oatmeal that Belle and Ludie loved so good was like the worst glue ever was to get cleaned off the sides of the pan.

Don’t leave the oatmeal pot in the dishpan a soakin, Mam said as she stood with her back to me looking pinto beans to put on in the big black cast iron pot for dinner, tossing the bad beans and little rocks aside.

Now how’d she know that was exactly what I was gonna do? I swear, I think Mam has got eyes in the back of her head. Some day maybe I’ll look and see.

I scratched and scratched with my fingernails before all that gummy oatmeal come off. Yuck! and I hated the feel of the slimy water. Mam knows, for with a sigh of satisfaction, I handed the clean pot to Corrie to rinse and dry and hang on the nail on the thick board behind the stove.

I put the dishwater in the lard stand for the fattening hog. Mam had bought a barr hog from Uncle John back a while in the spring of the year. She rubbed turpentine down the hog’s back to get shed of any worms he might have had. Couldn’t do a sow that way, for she’d lose her babies if she was expecting. But that barr hog took right off a growing and was getting purty fat. He’d fatten up even more this fall when them little chinky-pin acorns fell and he could get to eat them. I liked the taste of chinky-pins myself.

Dorse had set Belle down and Belle and Ludie and Molly all, was a playing in the wood box with sticks of cedar wood wrapped up in old rags for their baby dolls. They played in and out of the house and all over the yard. Most usually they stayed inside the paling fence. The yard was wore slick from all the youngens a playing.

Tops of big rocks was a showing and scattered over the yard, especially the back yard.