My name is Nate Charlton, and I was born on July 12, 1918. I live in Rocky Gap, Virginia. I ain’t got no occupation. I’m retired. I’ve lived here all my life in this area called Dry Fork. Well, I did live away from here for a short period of time when I was in the army and when I worked on the railroad. On the railroad we had camp cars and we stayed in through the weekday, worked there, and stayed through the week and then we come home on the weekend. But this has been my home all my life.

I’ve always lived here. I don’t know if I would go anywhere. But if I’d go and leave this area, I guess I’d go to Bluefield, or move up to Florida where my daughter’s at. That’s where she wanted me to come at now. Gladice, I got her in a nursing home. I can’t leave Evelyn because I got to cook, but I get my brothers to come over here and stay. I got to go up there and see her cause I ain’t never been to see her.

Family
I was born on July 12, 1918. My parents were Willie and Elizabeth Charlton, and before she was married she was a Stevenson. Now my daddy and my grandaddy, I don’t know where they was borned at. But my mother, she was borned down here at Elgood. Now my grandfather, Noah Charlton, used to live right here in this spot. This was the last place. He just moved from one place to another. He worked with white folks. That’s all he did. He worked all up and down Dry Fork, and in Rocky Gap. There was the Honakers and the Stowers. My daddy, too, he did the same thing. Now my grandaddy was a butcher, and my daddy was too and I took it after them. So in the fall they would help people butcher hogs and things.

I got eight brothers and sisters. Eight countin’ myself, but one got burnt up. Now I got four sisters, and well, I had three brothers which was seven, but I ain’t got but one brother and three sisters now. All three of them sisters lives with me. My brother that’s still livin’, he lives in Bluefield in Tiffany Manor. And my sister that got burnt up, well, her clothes caught on fire from the fireplace. And my mother ran to get water from the spring, where the water ran out from the ground, well they ran out there to get some water. She had just run by the fireplace and it caught her on fire. And she was swallowed the blaze, and before they could get her out, she died.

I don’t know how my family got this land. Daddy said he paid fifty cents a day. Fifty cent an acre for this land. That’s what he said. I don’t even know who he bought it from, unless it was that man over there. I don’t know. Johnny Sea. He used to live across from here in a house that’s gone. It’s a graveyard now. They bought that and my people, Hogan Ferguson, bought that from the Seas. Sea used to own all this around through here I guess. They bought that and my people, Hogan Ferguson, he bought that from the Seas. Sea use to own all this around through here I guess. He’s buried up on the hill. He was married to daddy’s sister, so he was his brother-in-law.

My grandfather, Noah Charleton, he stayed down there next to the church. He never did have a home. He just moved from one place to another. He lived over . . . well, before, he stayed with white folks all the time and he, he lived down there next to Nate’s and Frankie’s place. They had a house down there. Then he, after he left from down there, his son-in-law bought this here lot down here where the church is at. He come there and that’s where he died. He stayed by himself even when remarried. Yeah, he remarried. He stayed there by hisself when I wadn’t down there with him. Granddaddy. Yeah. And in Rocky Gap, he worked at the Honaker place. See there was Honaker, and then the Stowers place. He worked all up and down Dry Fork.

I remember the old house I was born in. The old logs down the road here now. Sold them logs to another guy for a house and he never did build it. They laid ‘em up there in the mountains. They never did build the house. He didn’t build ‘em outta that log house. All of us, we was all borned in that same house. Didn’t have but three rooms. It was a log house daubbed in mud, and it had an upstairs. And a livin’ room and a kitchen over there . . . it was terrible. Yeah, when it rained on the outside, it rained in there too! It was a wood shingle roof. And in the winter it was the same thing; the wind blowed, that there cold snow came in there. We’d be laying there with our arms in snow. We kept warm, but it was rough. The snow, it would come in through the house from up in the top. It would rain and my mother, I know when she could, she’d start getting buckets and things and set them right down there. But we lived---I mean, that’s the way we lived. My daddy and Cecil Webb took care of us. We had it the worst in the world. That’s the reason why I’m working hard now. We was the poorest people up here, us and Sam Webb. The Webbs, they’s dead and gone. They lived in the last house. Now it’s somebody else’s house---the Wagners’ house. Anyway, we heated with a fireplace and a cook stove. There wasn’t no place for another wood stove. Our chimney was rock daubbed in mud. It ain’t there no more, they tore it down.

My mother died in 1935. She was pretty young, 49. I guess I was around about 17 or 18 when my mother died. I left home after that, and I put my age up to be in the CC camp and I was sending my daddy the money. I just kept five dollars until I got raised and then when I got raised I was a foreman and a truckdriver and I would send him 25 dollars and I kept 8. I told him to build his house. He built it and put the top on it.

My daddy was always the kind of man who never stayed at home. He stayed with white folks. He worked for the Frenches. Right down the road at that empty house. Right down the road---Billy French. He stayed down there, you know. He was sick and he stayed down there. he stayed down there with the Whites and them, with the Slaughters. he stayed down there with them and came home on the weekends. He’d go back Sunday evening. He didn’t stay at home. The kind of work he done, he farmed down there. He farmed down there at them people. We owned ourselves 60 acres. I farm it now, but Daddy never farmed it ‘cause he went to them people’s houses. They had cows and horses up there, and hogs.

My mother worked the garden. She took care of me. To tell you the truth, she died. I was too young to know it. Over in there, my mother worked with them Tolberts. That rock house over from the school house, that’s the Caldwells. She worked there. That’s when my mother died, she was working for them. She’d wash, she’d do anything. We got an old organ up there now, what we got off the old Tolberts. Dave Terrence Tolbert was his name. We’d pick five gallons worth of blackberries, and it’s up there right now, our organ. I would go back and meet her in the evening and help her carry the groceries home. People worked. People lived.

But it wasn’t my daddy bringing nothing up here---because he was bringing stuff up on weekends. He’d bring enough to eat on weekends and then he’d leave on Sunday. I don’t guess he hated us or nothing like that, but he was a man just like Grandaddy. He just lived with the white folks all his life. he was right here at home and he was staying right here in the French house. He had a store up on the hill and him, Andrew and Wheeler Boyd, four families, was living down there in that house. Well, they moved out, all but daddy, and Eveline was down there. I stayed up there in that old house until I got the top put on, and after I got the top put on that new house, I went into the new house. Daddy wouldn’t stay at home. Now, I took care of Eveline and I sent him my money, and he went and built a house after so long a while and somebody wrote me a letter and told me, said, “Nate,” says, “Your daddy ain’t finishin’ your house.” Said, “He got somebody else to spend his money on.” So I stopped him from gettin’ it.

Ain’t no chapel on Dry Fork that had more than what we had for Christmas. Toys and everything. None of these chapels around here got what we got. I had stuff to give my nieces and nephews after they got big. I’d get wagons and things like that. Now my daddy---he didn’t buy us nothin’ like that. he got us our first shoes. I slept with them shoes for about a month. I took ‘em off and wiped ‘em off, I was so crazy about ‘em. Now my sister Sadie, Sadie and Cecil, they would buy all that stuff for us. What they did for a living was they worked in Bluefield, and my brother, he’d been in the mines. He’d be workin’ in the mines, and he left home when he was a teenager, too.

School
Now I came to school at that one room schoolhouse up here that used to be in front of the church. School started around eight or nine, something like that. The bell is settin’ up there in the church now. That big bell, you could hear it down in Rocky Gap. It’s just sitting in the basement now. We was gonna put it up, you see. Ferge give it to that church and we had a little one there, well Ferge took the little one. I don’t know what he done with that. Ferge was Marvin Tynes’s daddy. The schoolhouse belonged to them, they give the church this here bell, and that’s why they call it Tyne’s Chapel. And you can hear that bell all the way to Rocky Gap. That thing got a clapper that big, and it takes two good men to handle it. I don’t know where they bought it, but I do know I’ve ringed it many a time. That thing went and swinged me off the ground! You see I was their janitor at the schoolhouse. I’d make the fire, see, I was right up there. I’d make the fire in that school house and then I’d ring the bell.

That school house was heated with an old tank heater. It was made of out tin but didn’t last. We stayed warm. Sometimes they’d have Ferguson, and he’d cut the wood up there in the woods with an axe and I’d help him, and a lot of times we’d go on the hill. The teacher, she’d let us go up on the hill. Now we got out of school and went up there, right in that hollow up there, and we found a still. We found a still and we got in that beer! We drinked that beer, we had a time, buddy! They stopped us from getting wood up there for a long time. I don’t know who’s still it was. Well, I do know, too, but I can’t tell! So we got all into the mash up there. The mash, you make liquor out of it. That stuff was workin’, and boy that stuff was rollin’. All of them ol’ Ferguson boys were up there with me. They all dead now, all but one, Pete Ferguson. The one that lives right down there on the top of the hill. he wasn’t up there with me though, because he was too little. It was his older brothers, Rubin’s sons. We didn’t stay up there all day because these people told that woman to keep us outta there for some reason.

We’d go home for lunch. And we had recess, too. We had everything, we had programs, just like them on television. Buddy we were tough. People from Rocky Gap would come up there, yeah, we’d have a time with those programs. Just like on television---Amos and Andy and everything. And I was just thinkin’ the other day, that’s where it come from. You’d show a program in your school and people starts out and never starts. That’s exactly where it came from. Yeah. We’d do plays and skits like Amos and Andy. We used have what you call the May pole. We’d do ‘em in the school house, and people would come, they’d just find out about it. They’d find out where the programs were going to be at and what we was gonna have, and they’d come up here. The Frenches and the Tuggles and all of ‘em would come up here. At Christmas we’d have Christmas trees and we’d have plays all the time. Yeah we had a whole lot of plays.

Now I was good in school, but I lost it. My teacher, she just ruint me. Instead of taking my time, I was just running over that paper like it was nothin’. “My horse, it was barefooted. Blacksmith, blacksmith, I come to you. My little gray pony has lost a shoe. I’ve brought some coal for you to heat so that you may shoe my pony’s feet.” I runned all over that thing just sayin’ everything. Violea and them used to be above me and I was tough on ‘em in school. That’s cause we had spelling. I used to turn ‘em down. Me and them Ferguson girls, we’d turn ‘em down. I liked spelling the best, and I liked arithmetic. I didn’t like those others too much.

Now when I finished school---we didn’t have to go to school if we didn’t want to---I worked for Mrs. Tynes over here for 25 cents a day. They all dead now. I thought that was somethin’ man! They paid me and I’d take my money up there and give it to my momma. I thought tat I was a big man, givin’ my mother money. My brother would come to me, say, “Nate, you got any money? I wanna get me a pint of liquor.” I said, “I ain’t got it, but I can get it from my momma.” I said, “Momma, I want 50 cent.” She’d let me have it. I’d give it to my brother. Yeah, I thought that was somethin’, giving money to my momma like that.

Moonshining
I remember that moonshining up here. I made liquor for this guy from Princeton. Sure. Stayed in the mountains, me and a boy called Arch Saunders. Right back yonder on that mountain. Arch Saunders, that’s Pal’s uncle. He ain’t been very long dead. But anyway, yeah, we made liquor for him, right up ‘round that mountain up there. He had a still that was as big as a pickup truck. About as big as a bed on a big pickup truck. Well, he had a, he had a 60 gallon barrel for a dumper, for a cap. I got down inside of it and cleaned it out. I could run a hundred gallon in the day, and my buddy would take over at night. He run it a hundred at night. It ran all the time with the fire under it. Seal it up so it won’t loose no steam. He had a cream separator, for a worm, the worm go around and around. That’s how big it was, and you know how much it could pour out the liquor.

Shucks, it had to be good whiskey. That man wadn’t nothing but a, well, he was a perfectionist. Yes, sir. His name was Old Man Hunt. He was in Princeton when they got him. He was right down here at Hector’s. Hector wadn’t living. He was right there at Hector’s, right where his aunt got that house there. Got a still right up there, and it had a still that you built a fire under, then had another one over there run by steam. Goes from here over to there, and when you got him he had 22 hogs up there. I know, I was down there. Twenty-two hogs and . . . that’s what he made our bread out of, mash. He made our bread out of mash. I stayed up in there for a month before I come out. He bought us shoes, give us a dollar a day, bought us shoes, and all the liquor you could drink. But you didn’t want no liquor when you was working around a sill.

Then he got caught down here and that law up Laurel, Akers, he had one finger and he couldn’t hear, and it was Gibson and Gibson’s boy, Akers’s son, oh, it was a bunch of ‘em. They got him, they walked right in on him, and we went up there for awhile, they had him. I wadn’t up there when they had him but when they told him, these other laws told him, they was all getting liquor up there. He was giving everybody liquor. Laws the law, he was giving it to the law. All but this old man, this old man he, see, he wanted him, and they told him said, "Now, when you, you go down there and go burn that place up," said, "we’re turning you loose, you run over that hill then we’ll start to shooting."

So he went down there and went to setting fire to burn the still up, they turned him loose and he went right over there to the Tyne’s house right across the creek. He went over there ‘cause a lot of Tynes living and I went over there to where he was at and he asked me if I’ve got his false teeth, and and a, a brown suit that he had. That was his little building that he set in and when I told him I said, "Yeah, they’ve gone." He said, "Come on, let’s go back up there." You been back up there to where his little house he stayed in, he just pulled up a flat rock, pulled out a jar of money like that, he said, "The hell with that still," said, "I got what I want."

And then, and then, when he was all over this place, he be right up here in the woods when he couldn’t get sugar, he made---liquor out of syrup. I wadn’t here, and he got caught and so he went to prison, and they told him if he ever come back that was his, that was all he ever done, that if he ever come back said he would gonna give him life, and when he got caught over here at Princeton he, he had him a white girl he was living with when he was going to jail, it was a big poplar tree there, he run into it and killed hisself.

Hunt, Mr. Hunt. Yeah. Made that liquor out of molasses, cane molasses. He used syrup. I don’t know what kind of whiskey that would be ‘cause I didn’t drink none of that. I wadn’t here, I was in the army. But now he made it, he made it all over here. He was selling a nickel for 25 cents a pint. So, he had a still up behind the Tynes’s place, too. I didn’t help him down there, though. I helped him up here, and I run it in the daytime, and Arch would run it in the night. He had a still house, and he had shanty for me and him to stay in, and a place to eat. He’d do all the cooking. He’d give us the best of clothes and stuff. He’d pay my brother to haul wood, drag, cut down a tree and drag it down from up there so people couldn’t see the tracks going up in there. Woman down the road here turned me in, so they say. I don’t know.

Yeah, good days for people up in here, up in here he’d give everybody a drink. He’d give ‘em a quart, half a gallon, whatever they want. Everybody liked him. They called him Hunt, and he wanted ‘em to call him Sack, to call him Sack Daddy. Sack Daddy, that’s what everybody called him, ‘cause he didn’t want the law to know who he was.

And he got caught. He left ‘em up in here, he had two, he left one from up yonder where Fred lived, back up there on that mountain, and he told my daddy and brother-in-law that there was a twenty gallon keg of liquor up there, hid in a birch pile. They went back up there and found it. I got in trouble first time, I went to prison for it too. And it wadn’t none of mine neither. I just went down and got a drink. I seen the sheriff. I seen him, when I was there and I got away. And Alec told me to come on back down there with him. I went back down there and---no, I didn’t go back down there. When I, when the damn law come up the road, we, I got away from there, when I seen ‘em, and I was up here at my sister’s, Alec was up there too. We walking up the road there, and I, I jumped in, the law drawed a gun on us, yeah, and they didn’t need to go back down there, where it was at and they set up there and we didn’t start the running, but they run, two gallons of liquor off, and everyone of them laws drink liquor, and got drunk up there, except Shupe. Shupe used to be the law, the State Police. E.T. Burton was the law and he was up there drinking it, E.T. Burton take a drink of pint liquor, drink make him go cranky. But he didn’t give me but eight months. He knowed it wadn’t none of mine. He give me time cause I wouldn’t tell. He give that other guy, that other guy went to the penitentiary. I didn’t go nowhere but down here . . . down here where the prison women’s prison is.

Serving Time
You know, down here where they got these women’s prisons, we, well I didn’t go up there, but some of them went up there to do the heavy work, for them women, and um, he told me he said, "If you wanna slip off, wadn’t no, I wadn’t over no gun." Told me if I wanted to slip off, now, he said, " here’s the way to go, then don’t go that-a-way," said, "cause it’s dug…" Said, "it big deep holes out there, and fill up full of water, and there’s a lid over top of ‘em," said, "you’ll get killed." Yeah, told us, "If you wanna leave," said, "you, that’s the way to,” told us which way to go, and then they moved, they go tear that place out, they moved me from down there to Greenville, South Carolina, I went right through Bluefield on the bus, seen my nephew working over there on the railroad.

Didn’t have but about two or three months and I went down there and I told ‘em I said, "I’m tired of laying around. Give me something to do." He said, "Do you wanna work?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Well, sir, I’ll find you something to do in a day or two." Then he come up there and seen me, he said, "Can you control yourself around women?" I said, "Yeah, all I wanna do is get away from here, pull my time and get away from here." He said, "I’m gonna put you on the golf course," and he said, now, "It’s a woman, is what a, is there for us,” that, where we was at, and he said, it was a Major there and he had, he had a wife, he said, "Don’t you speak to her unless she speak to you," said, "I’m not saying it cause you colored, but she got a white guy in trouble right now cause he spoke to her," and I said, "All I wanna do is to get away from here," and I went down there and went to work and I was working, they was, a lot of hours finding me, I had 50 acres. There was a regular sand trap, had a rake, a dead log, that was as light as a feather, and um, when my daddy died, they went, they come and got me in, the corporal asked me said, "Charles, what have you done?" I said, "I ain’t did nothing," I said, "My daddy’s dead and I know it," and when I got up there and he asked me, he said, "Sit down, I’ll be with you in a minute." I said, "I know what’s wrong," I said, "My daddy’s dead." He said, "How do you know?" I said, "I know he was gonna die." He said, "Do you want the day off?" I said, "No, I’ll go on back out on the job," and they asked me did I wanna come in. I at first said "Yeah," and then come to figuring it up 90 dollars for the guard, and I said, "Huh- I don’t wanna go." My sister and them was gonna send me the money to come and I told ‘em I didn’t wanna go.

Wadn’t no law, wadn’t no gun or nothing with me down there, going down there, with two white guys that, a guy got out of his car at a service station, we stopped for something, and that’s when them two white guys said, "Looky yonder, that guy left them keys in that car," said, "Boy," said, "if we was out of here, what would we do?" When they got up there where we stopped at, the man was there with the gun, handcuffed ‘em and carried ‘em right to Georgia.

Yes, sir. Now, you didn’t nickname nobody down there. You did, they, they turn you, you gone from down there. Send you right up to Georgia. They had guns on them, they didn’t have a gun on me down here. The only time you seen a gun when they would take you to a prison up in Georgia. We would have our clothes clean, they got ready to call, to call my name, and they asked me did I have any clothes? I said, "Yeah, I got a suit," and they went and got me suit, and it wadn’t pressed, they made a guy take that suit to up there and have it pressed. Yeah, that’s the only guy that give me any trouble. His name was Shulor, and I asked him when was these other guys gonna come down there. He wouldn’t say nothing. I asked him when was these other guys gonna move from down there, down there and I called him. I don’t know what I called him, um, Ms., Laurie or something, he said, "My name is Mr. Shulor," I said, " Well, I don’t know what your name is," I said, "I just telling you what the Captain told me to call you," and he left me on the job and he told me, said, "I’ll be back," said, um, "I gotta take these men in," and when they got ready to, to check, I wadn’t there. He had those men come back to shoot me, I know what he was aiming to do, but when he come back I was gone, and I come in, I went up right by this, this here guard there at the gate and I told him what happened. I went up there to the Captain, and, and told the Captain, and they called him in, wanting to know why he leading me out there. He left me out there, he was, he was a mean dude.

I got to come home after my daddy, after my time was up, they give me some money, and I got that money come on up there and, and Laurie, that, that man told me said, "I’m supposed to stay with you," said, "but I ain’t. I’m going back." When he turned his back I went and got me a pint of liquor, liquor was right down there, come on in to Bluefield. (laughs)

After all that trouble people still made liquor, but now they don’t on account of those helicopters. Last one was made up here with, in, Whiteville, well this one was a white man too, it was some white folks right up the road, I mean they had the still up there, up, the end of the road and I was in the army then. I come home on the furlough, took 56 sticks of dynamite to blow that thing up. Yeah, and they, they had concrete cinder blocks and everything, women. Women back there and men, they tell me it was a girl that the law went and got by her, and this here girl had a ‘33, I believe, Ford, they had her blocked in, they went on up there, she was out in the woods, she come back there and knocked them, them cars out of gear, run ‘em over the bank, said she went out from in here, buddy they didn’t get her neither. Yep, she got away.

End of the house, end of the road up there was a guy I think, um, they had a stash, they’d bring some liquor down there, Wagon’s son, they would bring liquor down there, they’d, they’d give you liquor. My brother-in-law knowed ‘em and one of ‘em, they went and got after, he had a ‘33 Ford, and the sheriff would go on up, up Laurel, by the nursing home and when they, they, they got after him, they found him, he wrecked that, that car and setting up in there with a cigar in his mouth, killed him. Happy, Happy was his name. Happy was them people name up there, one of ‘em, he was the head man. Happy, yeah.

Marriage
Now I was married long enough to eat up a five pound bag of flour. Maybe not that long! One day and she walked off and left me, and I didn’t go back after her. I was married for a month maybe, a month or somethin’ like that. I didn’t get no divorce until I was married about 30 years. And somebody told me, said she had a baby, and that boy told somebody that “I got a daddy” down here, and somebody told me that boy, or that woman, will take some of your land. I went over there and I got my divorce. She had one before I married her. And she got another one after I married her. I got two of my own up in Florida. It didn’t matter to me.

Dance Hall
The dance hall down here at the Ferguson place---that was good, that was good. That’s where I lost my wife at, and I, and I had laughed, she left me too. She wadn’t nothing to start with. I just thought she was. And she run off with three of four men and I had the household there, ain’t never paid on it. I got that house and three acres of land for 150 dollars. I just turned it back in. She thought I was gonna take her back. Huh---she sure ain’t been too long ago walking with a walker for her, her son had beat her up. She had the son and he had beat her up and he’s on drugs and everything. Come back here for me to take her back, I ain’t got no place to take you. Yeah, her son come right here and asked me if I would take her back. Well you look out there I says, I gotta look after Evaline then. I don’t want her.

Man, that dance hall would be full. Yeah. Yeah, it would be full. There were two people, Fred Brunalow had it once, the first one, the guy left and he sold it. Was two, three people had it. And then it just went out of business. he got, he was, that guy up there was making liquor right up there on the side of the road and I got, I got caught. I didn’t wanna go down there, I was working back yonder on that mountain. He come up to me to help him to run that liquor. He done got some sugar and carried it down there, you couldn’t tell him nothing. Had it one time right at Fred’s spring up there. Fred told him to move it.

Sickness
When we got sick, the only way we got to go to the doctor was right through this deep gap in the mountain and we’d carry them. I didn’t, I was too little. But the others would carry them and take them to Princeton to the hospital. I ain’t for sure, but I think Marvin’s grandaddy died on that mountain. Nah, he didn’t, but one man died on top of that mountain. They had to carry him across there. When you ride down there, you’d have to stop when a car came by or walk. That’s about how narrow this road was. Down here at the Akers place, that road used to go back up behind there. And when we’d go down there on a horse we’d see a bus coming, and that horse we had was scared, and we’d have to get of that horse.

My brother was livin’ right here, and Doctor Davidson done give him up. Said he was gonna die, and they told me, said that I had to go get the doctor. And they told me to take my horse and put it in Mr. Gibson’s barn and walk down to Rocky Gap. And buddy, I git that horse, I rode it till you couldn’t see nothin’ but the fire of flyin’. I rode that horse all the way to the doctor’s office. She’d see a car comin’ and she was so tired she didn’t pay no mind. I went down there and told the doctor that my brother was sick and he said “Ah, I can’t go up there tonight!” I said “Well, somebody’s a goin’!” And there was another doctor named Dr. Bogle. He lived a little piece up Wolf Creek. And he said “Where you goin’?” and I said I’m going to get Dr. Bogle!” And he said, “Go on back home, I’m a comin’.” He passed me, you know where Benny Lockhart lives, well he passed me right there on that hill and then told Daddy and them that I rode that horse all the way to Rocky Gap. That horse was so tired, buddy, she wasn’t gonna do nothin’. I thought for sure my brother was gonna die. he told me, the doctor done put him on soup, and he told me, “Nate, I’m hungry!” and I said, “Okay, what do you want? Do you want something to eat?” I went up to the house and my sister had a little cookin’. I told her I was goin’ huntin’ and to make me some bread. Well she made me six biscuits and put applebutter and butter on it, and I put it in my bosom. I came right in there, and my brother was laying there in the bed. His hair done fell out and he said, “Did you bring it?” And I said, “Yeah,” and boy, he covered his head up and in a few minutes them biscuits was gone. Now, I was a big boy and my mother was living then. And I don’t know why I say that, but I said, “If you die, don’t you tell nobody!” and he said “I ain’t gonna tell nobody.” He couldn’t tell nobody if he was dead, but I wasn’t thinkin’, you see. But he got better. He came out a millionaire.

Cemetery
My grandmother was the first one buried up there on that hill. She was the first one buried up there. Right up on top of the hill there by the church, that's the Charlton and the Ferguson cemetery. Ferguson and my mother was the first one buried up there and then our sister. When I was comin’ up, there wasn’t but 5 graves up there. My mother, my grandmother, and then there was a guy that killed a boy up the road up there. He was an old man. Boy told him that his shotgun wasn’t no count. He said if it ain’t no count, let me have it and I’ll try it on you. He killed ‘em! Yeah! Killed ‘em. And they buried him right up on the hill. Old man, he was a Showalter. And the boy he shot was Cy Black. He killed him right there at the wood pile and he didn’t get nothin’ out of it.

Well, that happened before my time. And there was a man down the road that shot through the door and killed his sister, and that was after I was borned. And he didn’t mean to kill her. He shot through the door, hit her in the stomach, it was the shotgun that killed her. He left and never came back, and it ain’t been too long ago that he died. He went up in Ohio and died.

Garden
I have a garden up here. I have two or three here and one down there at the church. I used to have seven, some we owned on, on my nephew’s place, but when age come up on you, you know I don’t get ‘em, but I still have more to eat. I use to give a lot more, you see I fed the church down here. I fed 23 people at one time right here at the house. And what I mean, I fed ‘em too for two or three years, we just fell out, ain’t been too long ago. They don’t want me to work in the church. Want me to go down there and clean up before taking up collections, being a deacon, doing my part. They don’t want that. They want the preacher to do it all, and them women. So I let ‘em have it. Down here Sunday, they had singing, preacher had to go out to, to Bluefield and buy ‘em something to eat. They miss me right there.

In my garden I grow anything that I can grow. Beans, biggest thing, beans, potatoes, cabbage, onion. I don’t grow too many, much peas, cause then my sister there don’t like it. I like ‘em though. Beets, them people up here been wanting to come from everywhere and wanting to know who is that got, raise them beets. I guess we all do ‘em just about. Charles Akers, I raise a garden for him. Cause he put my cesspool in. Never charged me nothing. Never charged me nothing. As long as I got a garden he got one. You go down there and you ask him I carried, he come up here, I called him. He, he got five ‘fore anybody else, he got five gallon buckets of, of beets, his for his wife and loved ones. You ask him, see I didn’t have nothing. Everybody up here had a bathroom but me. My toilet was out there on . . . he said I see it you getting one. He dug it and paid for it hisself. The only thing I was---what, what’s it called? Oh yes, septic tank. Septic tank. He paid for that and I paid him. And I got a pump. I got water in the house. I’ve had that well too since when my daddy died. He died in ‘59. I guess it was the week before that, forty something, I think.

Everything I grow in my garden, well, I give it. I don’t sell nothing. I wouldn’t, I turned down a lot of money and then yet, a guy come up here and ask me did sell him something, I said, "I’m not gonna sell you nothing," I said, "I might give it to you," I said, "Now, if you wanna donate me something for it, sure." I said, "You can do that." Frankie’s down the road, Evelyn, Frankie live right down there in that big white house. They got a new house down there now. She give me 25 dollars for a bushel of beans. Evelyn give me, Nina, Naktoe lady give me 25 dollars. I turned in a lot of money. One come down here and just dumped his pockets, said, "I don’t know how much change this is," said, "you can have it." I got food in there now stacked from the floor to the top, in there, you can see right now. That I canned. All the money I got, I give it to the church.

CC Camp
I signed up for the CC camp at Bastian in '38, which made me about 19 I guess because I'll be 80 on July 12th. Well I signed up at a post office there right now. And there was a woman over there, she was an insurance lady, and she’s the one that signed me up. I believe it was Zareda Bruce, but I can’t think of the name. She type me up and said that she worked on insurance down in Kentucky. And it was right there I signed up at. I got on a train and went back up there to the CC camp. They took me down there, to Yorktown in a truck. They wouldn’t let the blacks in there at Bastian. There wasn’t no whites in mine.

When the Airplane Fell out of the Sky
If I could right now in the daylight, I’d go back yonder to the head of the creek where I use to work. I used to go back there, I used to work with Jessie Pruney, back there and around the ridges back there you can look and see down and over in, in, Glenlynn. It’s on this side of the pond. It road goes on this side. That’s a good place to go to cause you can go up this here road where that airplane fell. And you go back there. They, they say you can see five states, but you can’t see nothing but the mountains, but they said, they got a big rock---back there with---with something in it and it’s against the law to, to bother it, where people put back there.

I was in the army when that airplane crashed, during the war. I was here when the little one fell though. It was a little one that fell back there, and its men got out of it and walked. Walked down Wolf Creek, yeah. I seen people going back there, they didn’t tell what would happen, and they brought it out down there, you know, them little ole bitty things called aviator planes. That there was back in forty something two, and it was a small plane.

War
After the CC camp I was back on Dry Fork for a couple of years. And then I got drafted, and for my training I went to camp in Florida. They trained me to fight. I took part of my training in Florida and the rest in California. We went to Scotland, all the way into Austria. Well I didn't go into Austria, but most of them went to Austria. I got five battle stars. I was 36 days after D Day. I was there for the liberation of France. I didn't go to Paris. I could have but I passed. I didn't wanna go. And as far as I went in Austria was the Rhine River. That's where we was discharged at, but my other outfit went over there and see we got the star for that because the other outfit was over there. I was in the 3rd Army. My commander was Lieutenant Landers, and we had one that was a German. I can't think of his name. They went and sent him on. He got promoted. We was mixed up, we had white officers, and one black officer. But there weren't no whites in my unit, but we were connected to it. Our white outfit was the 79th Infantry. We worked with them.

I didn't use no gun. The only thing I used was these things a runnin'! And I liked to have killed my own self! Going through England, through London, we got there in the night time, and they had done dug net trenches. Well we didn't know it, and then there come that there flyin' saucer over. I runned down there buddy, and fell in a hole. My danged feet and my head just scrape the side of that thing going down through there. Been a little bit further, it would have broke my neck! I was runnin’ from that flyin’ saucer! The Germans would send that thing---they’d pour---they’d put gas in it. They knowed about how far that thing would come with the gas and they’d cut off and she’d come straight down. And they’d hit in a main field and burn up a haystack. Buddy, you don’t know where that thing is gonna fly! It’s scary. Over there at night time, Bed Check Charlie, he’d come over and he’d bomb all night long. Until we got some outfit, y’know. I’ll just tell you this, one black outfit over there on them guns, there was four of them, back out there somewhere, one here, one here, and one there, they would zero in on them dudes, but at night. They didn’t miss 'em, they’d get 'em. A whole lot of times they didn’t want ya to shoot ‘em down, they didn’t want you to shoot because when one falled, it was liable to fall down on a bunch of people and kill them.

When the war was over we celebrated right there where we was at. It was, watchacallit, that place didn’t have nothin’ but champagne in it, German champagne. That’s all. When you captured a German, the only thing you would get was his champagne. He’d break his gun up and everything, but he’d have that champagne. We’d be drinkin’ that champagne, and there was a hundred of ‘em down in there. That’s what they say they was, I don’t know, and you’d go on down in there, you just wouldn’t go down in the bottom. They got hungry, they come out. We just hanged tough. First, we’d tell him to go on down the road, he’d find a place, but we was drinkin’ that champagne. After we left, over there in that building where we eat at, a black guy come out there and raised the hood on his car. And they blowed him into half, we's comin' home too.

Railroad
Boy, when I got home, you don’t know what you’re talking about. When I hit, when I went over that Boston, Massachusettes, you’d better believe it, I hit this ground and laid right down. I knowed it had been spit on and everything, but I didn’t care. I kissed the United States, buddy! I was glad to get back. Too glad. You could have stayed in there if ya wanted to. I was discharged New Year’s Day. New Year’s Day, I was discharged, 1946. I rode a train into Bluefield and got a cab and come on over here and messed around till I got broke. And then I went on the railroad.

I’d go there to the railroad and quit, and I’d go down to Norfolk and work on the railroad and I’d come back. I just worked on the railroad. They’d take me anytime I’d go back. I laid track, and I run the motor car the last time I was on the railroad. It’s a car you haul men out on. That’s where we stayed at. They got pump cars, they got ‘em up in Bluefield right now. Have you seen them white cars? We slept in them. We slept right in the middle of the railroad track. Cars would come by so fast, it would shake them pump cars just like that! We got used to it. We liked that. Now they all come home ever week. I didn’t come home but about once ever two months. Yeah, I wanted to stay out in those cars and go different places, get a pass and go anywhere you want, Williamsburg, Portsmouth, Ohio.

Logging
I worked back there logging, cutting timber. Cut props and logs too. We’d commute sometimes for work. We’d go to, well I worked in Portsmouth for awhile and went away in Norfolk for awhile. They had cars on the train and that’s where we’d stay. They would board it up to make bunk beds. Two, one on the bottom and one on top over there, same thing here, let’s see, two, four, six, eight stay in one car. Big ole stove. It was fun. They had a camp car, they had a car with, dining, with tables in it, and they had a cook. The white paid more than a black cause they got better food, they left us some, if we wanted, they’d feed us the same as they fed them but, some of ‘em didn’t want it. They said they wanted to eat what they’d been eating. Well, they’d give it to, the, the white would eat beans, potatoes, stuff like that, but it, it just fixed different, didn’t even have no eggs. They’d have eggs for breakfast, ham, something like that, but now dinner and stuff they eat the same we eat.

Livin' the Rough Life
I've always lived here. I worked hard and built a house. Wasn’t nothin’ to do but for me to stay here. Daddy never did finish the house. I’m the one that ends up workin’ on it now. People over in Bland built me two rooms up there, and they messed it up. Well, I built the bathroom. I didn’t have no bathroom till here about last year. We didn’t have no bathroom. I’ve been havin’ it tough all my life, but I ain’t now! Used to, I couldn’t get what I wanted, but now I can run my hand in my pocket and get anything I want. I can say that same thing now, cause I don’t be wantin’ nothin’, but somethin’ to eat. I got my truck. That’s all I want, and taking care of my sisters since part of that money is theirs. We ain’t wantin’ for nothing.