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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview K-0507, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
J. D Thomas and his wife, Lela Rigsby Thomas, grew up on Sprinkle Creek in upper Madison County, North Carolina, and made their lifelong home not far from where they spent their childhoods. In this interview, they discuss the many changes that have come to Madison County since the early 1900s, remembering unpaved roads and reading by oil lamp, iceboxes and wooden sidewalks. Farmers, laborers, and textile workers formed a closely-knit community that bonded over decorating graves at their cemetery, or building barns together. But growth and immigration, speeded by road improvements and new highways that cut through Madison County, have changed the Thomases' community. They share their perspectives on these changes in this interview: Lela reveals a strong emotional connection to the area and frustration over the extent of its change and the number of new arrivals, although she is optimistic for the future. J. D., a self-described "old-timer," is resigned to his area's transformation and happy for the opportunity he hopes it brings to young people. This interview offers a portrait of change in people and in the natural environment, and a look at how one community has weathered the pressures of modernization.
J. D. Thomas and his wife, Lela Rigsby Thomas, remember the Madison County, North Carolina, of their youth and describe the changes that have transformed the area since then.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
It is Tuesday, November 14, year 2000. This is Rob Amberg, and I am in the home of J. D. and Lela Thomas on Sprinkle Creek, in upper Madison County, North Carolina. J. D., could you just tell me your name and your age? What I want to do is get a voice check on you.
Yeah, my name is J. D. Thomas, and I'm seventy years old.
And Lela, could you do the same?
My name is Lela Thomas, and I'm sixty-eight years old.
One thing that's always interested me about the two of you is that you were both raised right here.
Right here.
About a mile and a half up Sprinkle Creek?
A mile and a half exactly. One mile and a half from the road.
From highway 23?
From highway 23. One mile and a half exactly.
J. D., you're seventy-one—going to be seventy one.
Going to be seventy-one.
I'll be sixty-nine pretty soon.
So you have a real experience with this place.
Yes, that's right. We do.
So, Lela, what do you remember about growing up?
Well, I remember living in a house that was right here. It was a real old boarded house. Real old, old house. It was torn down and this little house was built, which I grew up in when I was going to school. I know that this road was just a little old narrow rutted out dirt road. There was no bridge over there. There was just a little old trail of foot logs over here at the bridge. This little narrow road, and there was trees on both sides. It was rutted out and muddy and all that.
How did people get in and out on that road, then?
Well, they had to have a truck that would go through the mud—like a four-wheel drive or a jeep—to get through those roads at the time. And the bus had a hard time getting up the road.
So did the road run through the creek part of the time?
It ran through the creek, yes it did. Just a small footlog you might say, to go across it. Some planks that was put across the creek.
So it forded the creek in different places.
Forded. Right, right.
It didn't actually run down the creek at any part of it?
No, no.
It did?
It did.
Did it?
Yes, it did. Right out here, down through there two or three hundred feet.
It ran through the creek, though?
It was the creek. That was the road. Yes.
That's not an unusual thing, I think, for these mountain kind of places. That was always the easiest place to put it because it was already carved out.
Of course, it was mainly rock in the creek and all like that. But as you said, fording other creeks on down where the other bridges are, traffic then—the old T models and '28 Chevrolets—had to ford the creeks.
They sure did.
If you didn't have high water.
Lela, you were talking about school. Where did you go to school? What was the name of that school?
Down on highway 23 there's an old brown building on the left as you go up 23. I went to school there for five years.
And what was that called?
California Creek School. California Creek.
And then where did you go after that?
To Mars Hill.
So you walked down to the smaller place?
Most of the time we did, yes.
You had to have ridden the bus to go to Mars Hill.
Oh yeah, sixth grade.
And that was a pretty interesting trip?
It was a new experience. Yes, it was a new experience.
Why?
Well, all the crowds and the hub-dubbing getting on the bus and off the bus, and having to go up all these roads, pick up all these kids.
So there were a lot of kids riding the bus?
Oh yeah. There were about three—let's see, Chandler Creek and Holcombe Branch and this road had kids on that one bus. I mean, we were really jammed on that bus.
J. D., do you remember that also?
Yeah, a matter of fact I can tell you one thing, Rob. The road was muddy and dusty in the summer time, what have you. Families were fairly large in those days, and when the bus came up through here and picked up it gathered exactly forty-one students on this creek alone. So you can compare that with the other creeks and the large families up and down the other creeks.
There were the Butners, the Cheltons, the Thomases, me, the Barricks, the Walrens.
Wow. And everybody had fairly large families.
Right, right!
How many siblings do you have?
Just one brother.
You have one brother?
Seven.
Now, you all were both raised here.
Right here.
Lela, you were raised right on this place?
Right here, yes, sir. Right on this place in a little house right here.
And J. D., you were raised . . .
Up the road about a half a mile.
Where the Flutys live now.
Okay.
He was born in that house.
Flutys live in that house. They've remodeled that house. The house was probably built in late 1800s.
At the time he was there it was just one big house. It had four big rooms. It had this one fireplace in the middle; you could walk all around the fireplace and all around the house, you know. It was one big fireplace.
But dad and mother came in here in 19 and 19 [1919]. Now, they lived in an old log cabin that didn't have any floors in it; a dirt floor.
On this creek?
On this creek, yes. Right below where Kenneth Butler lives right now, about a hundred feet down.
Where do they come from?
She came from Mitchell County, and he came from Yancey County.
Okay, so not too far. Just moving a little bit farther west.
Yeah. After they got drawn out there they settled in here.
And what did your father do?
He farmed. Farmer.
So when they moved in here he was intending to farm and wanting to farm?
Yeah, yeah.
He raised cattle and farmed. Well, you'd take basically all like that and everything. That went on like that until I guess 19 and 30 [1930] when they had the Depression and all like that. He rented or sharecropped or whatever phrase you wish to phrase that with, Rob.
Now was he raising tobacco, too?
Yes. Yes he was.
And this was up here where the Flutys are?
Yeah.
Okay. That's Dale's mother and father, right?
Right.
That's Dale's mother and father where they are right there.
So, part of the reason to have a big family is that it provides you with some workhands.
Was that your experience?
That was the experience, because the older siblings—brothers and or
sisters—would help mother raise the family. Ladies would do the
housework inside, and the boys as they got older would take charge
outside. Well, you go back to
So you were born in 1930?
1930.
So, I would expect that you probably had some chores even by the time you were five or six? You maybe had some things to do. I'm curious about what that would've been.
Well, I as a boy would have had the—not being the youngest boy—I have one brother that's five years younger than I, but the other brothers were older. My chores would be when they were in field to carry to them if they needed water, as you have seen and all like that.
Or food.
And then I would stay around the house. Maybe I would fix wood up with
an axe when I was old enough for to cook with or to heat with in the
winter time. The other things you could do, you had hogs to feed; you
had chickens to feed and the other animals on the farm. After I got old
enough I could do that rather than go to field and [do] those harder
jobs;
So you learned to figure out ways to stay out of the field?
Oh yes!
I can understand that. Was your family farming, Lela?
Well, that's a long story. My mother and her two sisters raised me and
my brother. There wasn't any factories or anything. They more or
And your father?
Well, he left me and my brother when I was five. I was five, and he was two. So we didn't have a father. We didn't actually have a father.
I'm sorry to hear that. So, you were not really farming on your own here?
No, everybody—well, we raised a garden.
Oh, sure.
We raised a big garden, but we helped all the neighbors do their farming. Well, I used to ride the tobacco—back years ago you had to drop the plants and set them with a stick. I would drop them and J. D. would set them out.
So you all worked together back then?
Yeah, even back then. Went to school together.
That's amazing.
We went to school together, we played together, we worked together. He
and me and his sister and brother. Then when he joined the marine corps
he started writing to me. Then when he come home, we'd go out. And then,
here we are.
That's wonderful. So you've literally known each other all your lives.
All our lives, right.
Yeah.
Even the old house that they lived in over there when they moved in. It was just an old old house. We used to go over there and go out in the fields and herd the cows in and all that stuff, you know.
J. D., when did your family move over about half a mile down the creek—over to what I know as the Babbit farm?
Well that was right after the Depression. People were getting back on their feet. Really, the Depression—there was money at the time; our governments did not know how to control all of that and what have you. So, at that time, the property we lived on belonged to the bank. One of the banks in Marshall. Okay, they got a chance to sell it to somebody. That was going to force my dad and all of our family to move out, [and] he did not want to buy it at that time. So he found this place over here—125 acres over here—which is known as the Babbit farm today, and he purchased it.
And what year was that?
1936.
'36, okay. So the Depression was—
Getting over with.
Then you got the new house in 1949? Was [that] when the new house was built?
No.
1946?
Well, as she said the old house. There are a lot of people will not believe, Rob, but these older houses—her house here at that time was not as rudely built as the one we moved into before we remodelled. You could actually see the cracks in the floor.
And in the walls.
In the walls. And when you waked up in the winter time some mornings you would have snow on your bedclothes. We used feather beds; we used straw tics when the thrashers come. Some of these people will be interested in that. Thrashers used to come around once a year to thrash your wheat, your grain and all like that, which in turn you went to a watermill to grind grain of all kind. It was run by water with a waterwheel, and you would take all that down and grind it. If you did not have any money to pay for that they would toll the grains so much and keep it.
As a matter of fact, down here at the end of the road where the Hawkins live—he had a mill grinder. Old Hawkins did.
Well eventually on up after about 1940 a lot of them began to get mechanized. Mills that they could grind, like that.
On your farm, then, do you remember getting your first vehicle?
My first vehicle?
On your place.
First vehicle on the place? We was living up here, and I guess I was
four years old. 1934. Dad had an old 1928 Chevrolet. To go to Marshall
and come back, it took all day long on account of the roads. There
wasn't any paved roads, and if it
So 23 wasn't paved either?
No. 23 wasn't even built. I'll get back to that. I know I was only four
years old, and I saw the French Broad River and that scared me to death!
You'd never seen anything that big?
Never seen anything that big! I'd saw all of our creeks and streams. In 1937 they started working on Highway 23. Down here there was a road coming in from Asheville down to about the county line. The road a-going in to Yancey County was unpaved; the road a-going in to Tennessee was unpaved; the road a-going to Marshall and all points east, west, north and south were unpaved. 1937 they got this road going through here, and in 1939 they opened highway between Tennessee going into Asheville. 1941 we got our first electricity in here.
You remember being without electricity?
Oh, I used to study by an oil lamp. Yes, and we had battery-powered radios. No TVs, no nothing. My daughter says, "Mother, well what did you do? How did you survive?" I said, "Well, Kim, that's all I knew!" I had to find ways to entertain myself. I had a battery-powered radio and oil kerosene lamps, and wood stoves to heat by and cook with.
Did you all ever heat with coal at any time?
Just wood.
No, not really, because most all the farmers and all the boys—when they got most all of the fall crops in and all like that, before snow started coming in about Thanksgiving along to Christmas all families had to set aside two weeks to go to the mountains, saw the trees down, take their sleds team down the rocks, what have you, to get the wood in and get that laid in right next to the house or the wood shed, if they had a wood shed. All these out buildings. Most all of the families at that time, like one big house today that will cover everything—the families in those days had they an out-building for each thing. They had a hog pen. They had a chicken house. They had a barn for the cattle. They had a hay barn. They had a blacksmith place. Corn cribs and all like that, whereas today it's all combined in one.
And probably a tobacco barn, too?
Yeah, tobacco barn. Right.
So 23 didn't even exist, then, until '37?
'39 they finally opened it up.
How did you get into Marshall? What route did you take?
They were old roads that mostly was made, Rob, in I'd say the early
1900s— well, even earlier than that. I'd go back to say 18 and 50 [1850]
up to 1900 when they was in here. The reason it's called California
Creek, some people was coming from down east and got over this far. They
thought they was in California. So that's how California Creek got its
name. And most of them was roads—trails—that the pioneers had used
coming in here. So we would leave right here, you would go down, you
would ford one, two, three creeks. Then you would go on down to
California Creek, following the old ox-cart or the old horse and wagon
trails on down lower California
So that would have been the old [Highway] 25-70?
25-70 into Marshall, yeah, because they had the railroad tracks. That was another amazing thing to see all those coal-fired engines pulling those big long trains through all that. And also looking at pulling in the passenger trains like that. It was a real experience.
Yeah, that was the main road on in to Greenville and Oxville and all those points in there. But we were isolated in here until late '30s, early '40s.
Well I've been snowed in for weeks and weeks. Couldn't even step out the door hardly. We'd wake up and there'd be ice in the milk.
Now, did you have a spring box?
Yeah, and there'd be ice in the milk. Little chips of thin ice in the milk.
Why, I forgot [about the] spring house a while ago, where you had your spring and your spring box that you kept—
Your butter.
You mentioned on some mornings you'd wake up and there would be snow on coverlets and things like that.
Yes.
Right.
But as things progressed on and we got electricity people started to make a little more, do a little more. The farming seemed to increase a little bit as the government and state stepped in to support prices on all that stuff. Today where you see everything grown up you could look out and see many many pretty bluegrass fields, and cattle and horses and sheep and goats and all like that.
So there was a lot of people right in through here. Farming was the main thing.
Oh yeah, that was it. You had to farm.
People were doing tobacco and cattle, and probably hay.
Corn.
Until after WWII nothing really got into high gear like it is today.
This road through here, then, was a real rut?
Yes it was.
When you were talking about being in the '30s and going down to Marshall, I was thinking that there's probably still a number of families that are travelling by horse and wagon.
Oh yes, there were!
That happened on up until the road was complete in 1939, because in going over here to the old California Creek Church house—when the road come through they had to move it up the hill about 200 yards or so.
The church house?
The church itself, which was established in 1869. And Lord have mercy, we used to go over there in the early '30s on up until I guess nearly '40. You would see wagons and buggies and all like that. People used those that could not afford vehicles and all like that, Rob.
To go to church.
Everything like that.
You're both interested in music. Do you remember a family that would have lived a little bit over the mountain, over towards Bear Branch in that area, named the Callaways? It was two brothers. They were musicians, and they travelled. They ended up being in the Grand Ole' Opry. It was two brothers.
I guess those two brothers were probably some kin to me, because my daddy's sisters married into that family. The Callahan brothers?
Oh, the Callahan brothers! I remember them!
They lived over on Bear Branch.
They lived over on Bear Branch. They sure did, that's right.
They sure did!
He was telling me about when they were young and getting started, that
they would just travel on up this road—all up and down through here—by
I do. I remember real well.
I sure do. I remember in 19 and 37, Bill Monroe debuted down here at California Creek School.
Yes.
The price to go see Bill Monroe at that time was about one nickle for children and a dime for the grown ups.
And then we have a neighbor that used to live up in this house, Rob. Up above us. Syvla Shelton. He would sing these old, old timey ways. He would go to singing schools. He would teach, he'd have his jew's harp. He would always sing.
What was his name?
Sylvan Shelton.
If you want to find out more about him, go out here and see Richard Dillingham at the artifacts—at the college.
We have one of his tapes right now.
Richard has got a whole lot on that.
We have his tape that he made.
Well, that all really interests me. Like you were saying, it was a very isolated place, but yet people found ways to get out when they needed to get out. But also mainly just lived right here. Your whole life was—
Right here.
Each family was, you might say, self-sufficient. They didn't really have to go and buy much anything that they needed, except maybe coffee, sugar, some other things that they wanted to indulge in that they could not make themselves. But you had molasses, which you used as sweet material. You had all kind of fruits; you had all kind of grapes. You had all kind of other berries. The can house and the apple house, meat house and all those things were stocked full—as you read in the history books—right on up until 19 and 40.
We would can beans; we would can corn; we would can berries. Potatoes. Sweet potatoes, all that.
So even during the Depression I'm sensing that you all had food.
Yes, we did.
Yeah.
And you took care of yourselves, basically. You had plenty of water, plenty of wood.
Spring out back for the water.
So when did you leave to go into the Marines, J. D.?
Well, I left in January, 1951. That was about the time the Korean War
was getting situated after World War II. Seems like World War I got over
with in 1917 and lagged along [until] 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl
Harbor. Five years after that they sent the advisors over to Korea and
they were calling up many, many men. I had planned on farming, but I
kept getting
You weren't thinking that "God I need to get out of here." You had planned on staying here and farming. That's what you were going to do?
Right.
Right on the homeplace?
Right on the homeplace. So I went into service and put my three years in
there, got to travel part of the world and see what it was like and all
like that. I got out in January of 19 and 54, and this buddy of mine
that had been in the army enticed me to go down to work for the federal
government in South Carolina. And the little lady over here enticed me
to "let's get married" in July in 1954.
It was all you, right. He had nothing to do with it.
1954.
And moved to Augusta, Georgia.
How long did you stay in Georgia?
We stayed down there until 1965.
So, eleven years?
All of our kids were born down there.
And during that time when you were gone, when you had moved to South Carolina, did you all come back up here pretty regularly?
Oh yes. He worked night shift, so we'd leave Friday morning. Stay until about Monday, and we'd go back to Georgia.
So you came up every few months? Did you come up for Decorations and things like that?
Yeah, Homecomings and like that, whatever. We'd usually load the trunk of the car down with watermelons, and when peaches got ripe we'd bring all the family peaches. They had to wait for the peach trucks. They had a farmer's market, I guess you might say, back then, whenever it was established. I don't recall what time. But we could go to the orchards down there and pick up watermelons almost for nothing.
After we came back from Georgia they built that bridge and paved that road up this way.
So during that time between '54 and '65—or at the beginning—when you left, this road was still a dirt road?
It was. It wasn't paved 'till we got back from Georgia.
Was it improved from that time when you were younger or [did you] still ford the creeks?
No, they'd built bridges.
They built bridges on it sometime. I don't remember when.
They put gravel on it.
You don't remember when, though?
No, that was in between the time we was away from here. Because the time
we was away from here—all the young boys and girls, eight, ten, twelve
years old—you gone ten years, you come back, you don't even know them!
So when you went into the army in '51, that would have been a time when this road was still pretty rough? And then you got back and you all left and went down to Georgia, and then in between that ten/eleven year period, that's when they started making some improvements.
Change was not as fast as it is today, but there was improvements made all along.
So when you all would come back—if you stayed away for three, four, six months, something would have been different?
Oh yes.
Do you remember any of those periods? Those drives back? And just getting closer to home and you'd get anxious to be there and see everybody and then say, "God, what happened there?" Do you remember any of that?
Lela, they had built—when did they start the four lanes in Asheville? In what year?
In the '70s, I think.
We were back here then.
When our kids were in school they would watch the men working on the road. We had a big old willow tree in the yard, and they took a good part of our yard and took the big willow tree.
But they had not made very many changes over the years. Nothing more
than put a bridge down here, and one out there, and one down at Mr.
I remember you telling me about them when they were grading the road, and how it used to be a horse-drawn grader?
Yeah, I can sure remember when you would grade a road and you had a team. What you would call a dirt pan. It looked like a wheelbarrow but it was flattened out, and you would put your team or your ox in front of that and hold that thing. As they go along a-pulling it would scoop up dirt. Then you would flop it down a little bit, and it'd scoot, and then you'd flip it over. A dirt pan.
And road crews?
Road crews, that's what they were using. Then I remember the mid-'30s they had some caterpillar-like vehicles. Road machinery. Then they had what they'd call a road scrape behind it, which was manually operated by hand like a wheel chair. That would raise the blade up and down, and the man up here would be pulling that with a chain or maybe a steel bar. That was the road scrape. Took two people to do that.
It was almost two separate pieces.
Yeah, two separate pieces.
Those must have been some rough roads back then. You were talking about going out and you'd bust an axle or you'd bust a tire. Was that a regular—
That was an everyday thing. I don't know what year they finally put
starters on the cars and put a battery in, but they used to run with a
magneta. You had
But it took forever to get even to Mars Hill then. It was, "Are we going to ever get there? Where is this place?"
Now, were there gas stations out there? Where would you get gas? Where would you go to work on a car?
Most of the people had a screwdriver, pair of pliers, and hay bailing
wire. That would take care of most of you're A-Models, your T-Models and
all like that.
That's great.
They knew how to do most of them and did that, because there were so many things happened along the way. We had no wreckers; we had no way of getting the car there or anything like that. But you did have mechanics in Mars Hill. Then the stores before electricity come to had the old hand pump gas stations. Doc Ramsey's store here; Eddie Bryant's store—well, Edgar Bryant's store—over on [Puncheon?] Fork. Edgar Bryant and Zetty Bryant. The old store over there, where the old Murray Branch before Highway 23 was built. Doc Ramsey, over here on Highway 23 had one.
An old store.
And you would not only get gas out at Doc Ramsey's, but he would have other things right?
They had a whole complete thing, because a store at that time was a grocery store, it was a dry goods store, it was hardware. Everything combined into one.
So might he have even parts for a Model A or something like that?
Yes. They would keep anything and everything. They had all things for your house—all kind of brooms, all kind of stuff like that. The women, if they needed any kind of washpans and what have you. It was, what shall we—general merchandise, everything. And even for the teams and all like that, they had harnesses and pads and collars, and all like that. Even the ones that had wagons, they had wood, made wheels, or you could buy the spokes and the hub and also the steel rim. They all had parts for that and everything.
So you could take care of everything right in this little area?
You certainly can; most the time you could. You had to.
You could just walk down to Doc Ramsey's?
Oh, yes.
Yeah, you could walk down there.
When you were doing that, then, you were young and coming up like that, and you would walk down to what became Highway 23 eventually. Would you know most of the people along the way?
Everybody. Everybody knew everybody.
And did you go to church up here?
We'd walk from here to California Creek Church, up Highway 23.
And how far was that?
I guess two miles.
Two and a half.
Two and a half miles we'd walk to church.
Two and a half miles from down there where we used to walk. We'd walk to 23 and it's a mile and a half from here, so that'd be two miles and a half.
You mentioned Decoration days. Was that a pretty active thing when you were coming up?
That was a big thing. The cemetery down here right below us, which is
called the Sprinkle Creek Cemetery. Let's see, my grandparents, my great
grandparents. I've got an aunt; I've got some cousins. J. D. has his
grandmother and granddaddy and aunt and uncle down there. We'd have a
big thing every year. We'd have maybe dinner and singers and speakers.
It'd be an all day thing. Everybody
And so there were a number of families that are in that cemetery, and it would be families all from the community?
Right. From other counties.
Now, does that still go on?
No. Well, they still come there, but we don't have any speakers or
anything. We just come in maybe on Saturday or Sunday, and they
When did that change? Do you remember?
Let me think. I was there in high school. I would say about late '40s.
Oh, so that was a long time ago. Then, it's really slowed down.
When I was going to high school that was a thing of the past. Nobody did anything then except go and decorate the graves, and that was it.
Wow, that's really kind of amazing to think that it was so long ago.
It's been a long time, because I graduated from high school in 1950 and there wasn't anything going on down and the cemetery.
So did you think about getting out of here when you were in high school? When you were sixteen or seventeen years old? You had to know there was stuff going on out in the world at that time.
I was hoping to get out and do something when I got through high school, but I didn't have any idea what or where. I went to Asheville. There was the J. J. Newberry store. It was a dime store and they had this record counter, so I worked in the music department for I guess two years while J. D. was in the service. I sold records, record players, music, all that stuff.
Is that right?
In this dime store. Sure did!
How did you get there?
Ken Butler worked at the weather department. I'd ride with him. He worked in the weather bureau.
So you would have been eighteen, nineteen, twenty?
Yeah.
Now, is that when your interest in music developed?
I guess, because people would come in to the Asheville City—it was
called Auditorium then. They'd put on programs. So one weekend, Ray
Price was going to be there, and his band. So this man came in and said,
"Do you have anything from Ray Price?" And "Yes," I said, "I have all
his records. I love Ray Price." He said, "I'm Ray Price."
That's great!
They had a great big record bar there, Rob. That thing was huge.
I'd play the records for them right there, all that stuff. They'd come in and say, What's so-and-so's greatest hit, or their latest hit or whatever. Or, what is number one? I'd get it for them. We ordered all the records for them, and I'd get it and play it for them.
And you played music in the store then?
Oh yeah, continually.
So you were kind of like a DJ?
Right, yeah.
So at that point you were spending some time in Asheville and going to some of those concerts, too.
Oh yes! All-night singings and country music things.
Did you think, "God, now I've got to go back to Sprinkle Creek."
So that caused you to think about, "I'd like to get away from here."
There was one period where this girlfriend of mine—I worked upstairs, and she worked downstairs. She lived in West Asheville, so I stayed with her for a little while.
So you liked that?
I liked that, yeah.
What did you like about it?
Getting to-and-from easier, you know.
But did you like being in town?
Where all the activity was. I enjoyed that; I really did.
J. D. when you left to go into the army in '51—and you were 21 years old—were you thinking that when you came back you might farm still? Or were you thinking that you had gotten out and seen the world a little bit and seen that things were maybe different out there than they were up here on Sprinkle Creek? Did it cause you to change your thinking about what you were going to do when you got back?
Well, not really Rob, because I had still planned when I come back in January—I knew I would get out in January—that I would have time to make plans for springtime. But after you're gone a while and all like that, then other things develop. Well, dad died there in the time I was in service; he died in June of 19 and 52. He wasn't all that old at the time—he was only fifty-six years old when he passed away. And there was other things come up, so I just decided I'm not a-going to interfere with family and all like that. I'll find me something. And as I said, a friend of mine told me to come on down to South Carolina and—or Georgia—and there would be work down there. So I thought well, "I'll give that a try and see what it's like." But it was a life where you got into working with the federal government—into the Atomic Energy Commission, and then you had to go to school, go to school, go to school and become a—oh, what are we going to call it—a nuclear physicist or all this other stuff. You had to learn everything about atomic energy and all like that. At the time, the outside world knew nothing of what was going on. It was real tight security and all like that. You couldn't even tell your family or none of your friends what you was doing there.
So this was down near Augusta?
It was in Akin, that's right.
Well, that was over there. They did away with the little town of New
Ellington, but it was near Augusta. It was near Beach Island. It was
near Akin and all like that. The
Wow, that's a big place.
Yeah.
So you stayed there until 1965, and you were in your younger thirties. And you had children by that time?
Yeah. Three boys and a girl.
And then you moved back up here?
Yeah. We lived in Mars Hill for a while, then came up. At the time his brother lived in a little old house that was here. He left and went down to Salisbury to live, so we come up here and we bought this house, and moved up here then. That was about the time they were working on this road right here—paving the road, building the bridge.
And so when you got back, you were thirty-three or so. And four children. Young children. What did J. D. do?
He got a job at Enka. American Enka. He worked there for eleven years, then the department he was in was completely closed down. So then he went to Broad River up on the river road, lived there. Then he came back with the Madison County School System, and worked there until he retired in '92.
What did you do with the school system?
Everything.
Well, I started out as a custodian. And with the knowledge that I had on machinery and all like that, I finally started doing electrical work, carpentry work, maintenance work.
Keep the furnaces going.
Bill Sears—the superintendent—one day came in and said, "JD, I need you
in the maintenance department." So he signed me up for the last four or
five
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Well, sometimes I did wish I was back in Georgia. A lot of good friends, and I enjoyed living down there. Although it was hot, I still liked Augusta. But then I got the kids all in school, and I went to work. I enjoyed it when I went to work and got settled back up here and everything.
So where did the kids go to school?
Mars Hill Elementary School and High School.
That would have been Mars Hill High School?
At the time, yes.
Did any of them ever go to the consolidated high school?
Yeah, our two older boys were the first ones to graduate from the new school in '74. Then we had a son and daughter graduate from there, one in '76 and one in '83.
So everybody graduated from the new school, then. Your two older boys went to school and did most of their time at Mars Hill. Where did you work when you moved back?
Well, when I first came back I did substitute work at the school
cafeteria. Then I got a job at AB Emblem in
So those would have been mills pretty much.
Factories, yeah. Or plants.
Did you do a bunch of different jobs in the mill?
I was mostly chief inspector on all the patches that were made. They more or less came by me, and I would okay them and send them out to the customer. That's what I did.
Did you like that?
I loved it; I really did.
Did you work with some good people?
Oh yes. It was like one big happy family up in this little plant on Rim's Creek.
Every morning she went in, she'd take them a paper, Rob. "Well, here comes gramma with a paper!" They knew that. And she also made the coffee for them.
I was the first one there, and I'd make a big ole' urn of coffee for everybody that came in.
You talked about it being like a family. Did you all do things together also? Were there company parties?
Oh yeah, we had dinners and parties and all that. We enjoyed that. We knew each other just like one big family.
Are you in contact with any of those people still?
Yeah, I have spent a little—we'd call each other and meet each other at Rose's.
Most of the time we go to Rose's on a Wednesday afternoon, and we'd see
anywhere from four, five, six or to dozen people. That is senior
citizen's day at Roses.
So there's places that you go? And you'll hook up with folks, just knowing that they're going to be there?
You was talking about people getting along with people. You did not have to lock doors back in those days when we were growing up. Everybody knew everybody. If Rob Amberg broke a leg and could not work, all the neighbors would gather around and do all of his work for him until he recuperated. That's the same way, when you go to all these plants and all like that. People sharing and being each other's brother's keeper.
As a matter of fact, this plant that I retired from, I was always going
in and making everybody laugh. When I left they said, "Oh, this is like
a morgue. Why don't you come back? This is like a morgue since you
left!" I even gave the manager a fit doing things to make him laugh.
Every place needs a person like that.
Oh yes, there's
Well, Lela, first of all, I guess there got to be a lot of traffic between here—after they built a road up, I don't know when it was built up—and Yancey County. I guess we were away here when they built that [because] that was dirt. But after we come back here a lot of traffic through in to Yancey County and Mitchell and Avery County. Lot of traffic in Tennessee after they got the one built through there. After they got the other road coming in from Asheville, down near where the present road is.
So that would have been 1920?
1923. Those changes come in there. You started getting a lot of the big chain grocery stores, which was rooting out all of your independent grocery stores. You started getting in a lot of larger gas service stations, which was rooting out the combinations of the grocery stores and everything like that.
I remember I moved here in '73 in November, and I remember the Ingles in Marshall had just opened. It had been open two or three months.
We came back and the stores—when the company store was built.
Which one? In Mars Hill?
23 Country Store, over here on 23. That's still surviving real good over
there. Then they started improving the schools. Everybody wanted to
When we first came back they had five high schools in the county. There was Mars Hill, Marshall, Hot Springs, Sprinkle Creek, Laurel—
While we were away from here—I'd say in the '50s—I-40 came through, which should have gone down the river road to Tennessee, I understand. But it went through Haywood County in that direction.