| Mom would get the fresh meat that would be cooked right away. One of the things me and my brothers loved was when mom made pork rinds. My mom would cook pork tenderloin and bacon for breakfast. Mom made the lightest and most delicious bisquits you ever tasted. From our chickens we would have plenty of eggs for breakfast. Mom made milk gravy from whatever meat she would be cooking for breakfast. A lot of the pork would be salted and hung in dad's father's smoke house. They would be left hung from the rafters until we needed some for our meals. Daddy learned to be a mason at 8 years old. Papow supervised his building of the chimney to the fireplace of their home. Daddy was very good at building rock walls. Our house was built on the side of the mountain next to the road in Stretchneck Holler. The road was very steep at this point and the far end of our yard met the road as it continued up to Papow Cloud's house. There were two wooden steps up from the road to our yard. The road cut through the side of the mountain and our house set high up on the side of the mountain. Daddy built a rockwall to hold the dirt back so it would not slide into the road and possibly bring our house crashing down at that point of the road. The rockwall was around ten feet at the highest point. Daddy built a rockwall behind our barn which set between the road and the creek. His purpose was to keep spring floods from washing away the dirt behind the barn and the barn itself. Daddy never owned a moonshine steel that I know of (he definately knew where to get it when he had the money, but I do remember him making his own beer or homebrew as it was referred to. One time he and I were down at the barn. He was working on something and drinking. He gave me a sip but I didn't like it. He decided he and I would take a walk to Uncle Elmer's house. This was Mamow Cloud's brother who lived below our house. He was not so steady on his feet. I don't know how long he had been drinking. He tripped half way to Uncle Elmer's house knocked me down and he fell too. He got up and kept on walking not even glancing my way. After crying for a while, mom came to see what had happened. I learned to stop following Daddy around when he had been drinking. Later on in life Daddy became a bee keeper like his father. He enjoyed nature very much. His love of the earth and all its creatures was in his genes from his mother's father Andrew Jackson Presley who's grandmother was a full blooded Cherokee indian. He loved to sit next to the bee hives and watch them fly out in their search for necter and fly back. He could tell by the direction they took what kind of trees or bushes they were collecting nector from. He also could tell by the color of the honey what type of tree or plant it was made from. Dad loved to take his gun and his dogs and go to the mountains. He dug wild onions or garlic called "Ramps" by the locals. It had a very pungent odor but tasted really good. Unfortunately it left a very strong bad smell on your breath also. In the spring all the students at the local grammer school were warned that if they came to school smelling like ramps they would be sent home. Another wild plant that was picked in the spring by the sacks full was poke salat. This was a wild plant that could be cooked and eaten when it was just starting to grow and was still small. This plant could grow to four foot and get purple berries on it. At any stage other than in its early growth this plant was poisen if you ate it. Early settlers learned from the indians what plants, berries and roots were eatable, medicinal for human beings or animals. Without the help of the indians they would have surely starved to death and died from lots of causes. Ginsing the root herb that was so valued in orential countries grew wild in the mountains of Kentucky. If we needed money and didn't have enough to buy something, daddy would take trips to the mountains digging up "Sang" as ihe called it. The Ginsing would be dried in the summer sun during the day and brought in the house at night so it wouldn't be stolen. Daddy was a mean son-of-a-gun when he wanted to be, so I doubt that anyone ever thought of stealing anything from him. In the fall when the Ginsing was dried out it would be taken to whomever bought it and daddy would come home with money. The price would vary depending on the demand. We raised a big corn crop every summer. Corn was the main staple in our diets. We would eat some fresh picked. The rest was cut off the cob and cooked into cream of corn. Fresh canned cream of corn tastes nothing like what you get in a can today. It taste exactly like eating fresh off the cob. Some corn would be dried and fed to the pigs. Some corn would be ground into meal which was another staple of our diet "Cornbread". Daddy bought an old car that still ran and hooked the engine up to a grinding mill and people would pay him to grind corn meal for them. Daddy was a very good shot and entered many contests. One that I remember most would be the annual Turkey shoot. He won many thanksgiving turkeys for us. Daddy was also an outstanding gambler. He would come home three sheets to the wind and mom would help him count his money. Some for mom (without him catching her slip it under the table and some for him. 50lb cow feed bags came in lots of different patterns and prints. This was to keep the women folks happy I guess. Mom would wash the feed sacks, take out the seams, press the material (cotton) and cut it up and make dresses for me, curtins, pillow cases, and whatever she might need. Daddy and some of his friends would go to the mountains and sometimes stay gone for a few days. They would spend time hunting Ginsang, picking ramps, hunting animals like rabbits and squirls for food. In the summer there would be lots of salesmen, hobos looking for work, people selling peaches and such from their trucks. The hobos and salesmen daddy would scare to death and they would leave Stretchneck in a hurry. He liked to pull his gun or his big knife from his overall pocket and they had no business in his holler. These traveling salesmen sold things like socks, bibles, household goods, household linens and curtins, sewing notions. They were not welcomed into many houses in Dizney. Continued. . . . . |