He was weaving down in the weaving room. He got sick, he got in bad, bad
shape. They took him to Charlottesville, Virginia—that hospital up
there. He stayed up there a while. They finally let him come back home
with a treatment. He didn't seem to improve very much. It finally got so
he could walk on crutches. More dead than living. He was just in bad
shape. Just before I left up there he met me down on the street there
one day. He wanted to ask me some advice. I said "What is it?" He says,
"Now I'll tell you. I got a letter from a fellow over in Tennessee. He
said he had some medicine that would cure me." I knew he was already on
a very strict prescription from Charlottesville. I told him, I says,
"Lester, I can't give you no advice on that. One thing I would tell
you…."
He says, "If I take this medicine from this
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over in Tennessee, he's just an old mountain man. That's all he is. But
he says he can cure me." My advice is, "If you stop taking this medicine
from Charlottesville, the prescription. For three weeks to take this
medicine from this old man in the mountains, you could be done gone on
from here."
"Well," he says, "I'd soon just be dead as living anyhow. If I don't get
no better than what I am now, I don't want to live."
With that I left him, I didn't hear anything from him for several months.
Three or four or five months after I come to Plaid Mill. One day he
walks in down there and wants a job. I says, "In the name of god, what
have you done to yourself."
"I didn't do nothing but take that bottle of medicine that old man sent
me from up in the mountains. I quit taking the medicine I was getting
from Charlottesville and I just took this one bottle of medicine this
old man sent me. And I'm in good shape now."
And he was. He could get around fine. He went to weaving down there, and
that is a very active job, you know. He never had particular disease,
what it was. I never knew what it was.