Jack and Jenny

I remember when I was growing up on the farm that we had two old donkey’s, a jack and a jenny, which we gave the ever-original donkey names of Jack and Jenny. We only used them to plow up the garden in the springtime so most of the time they pretty much just wandered about the farm whenever and wherever they pleased. I remember they were inseparable, and they would stand for hours along the fence line out by the house and just nuzzle one another. Being meaner than a striped-eyed snake, I’d sometimes get so annoyed by them that I'd sneak away from everyone and throw rocks at Jack and Jenny just to get them to move. They’d just look at me with those big ol' sad donkey eyes and walk off to a more secluded location where they’d again nuzzle each other.


Cows on the farm.

Nobody ever knew where Jack and Jenny came from, they were on the farm when we moved there several years before. Mom and Dad asked the man who owned the farm about to how old Jack and Jenny were, and he said he didn’t know. He said he was 45 years old and from the time he was a kid, he always remembered Jack and Jenny being there. I also remember in the building out from the house, near where we had a doghouse for our Saint Bernard named Tuffy, there was hanging on the wall two old leather harnesses. The leather was cracked and the metal tarnished but I recall that someone, probably my granddad, decided to oil up the leather and clean up the tarnished metal so we could use the harnesses on Jack and Jenny. Well, when they were cleaned up, the metal turned out to be brass and boy did those harnesses ever shine. Even I realized just how pretty Jack and Jenny were in those harnesses, to me they seemed to step a little higher and seem a bit more regal whenever they wore them.


The building where the harnesses were found was near here.

But like I said, Jack and Jenny led a pretty good life on the farm, but Lord could they ever get on your nerves with the incessant nuzzling of each other. It was day in and day out, every time you'd see them, they’d just be standing around nuzzling each other. I remember complaining about them to my Granddad, and he would just tell me, “They’re old. It’s hard to tell how long they’ve been here. Just let 'em be.” They weren’t any fun to aggravate anyway so aside from the occasional thrown rock, I typically ignored them. That is until the one day when we found Jenny laying dead in the road. Jack was standing beside of her and was nuzzling her.

Well as you might imagine, moving a dead donkey is a chore. Whenever a large animal would die on the farm, we’d get the tractor and using a chain, we’d drag the carcass back into the woods to an out of the way location where the foxes and possums and buzzards would clean it up. We never buried the large animals, probably because have you ever tried to bury a cow or a donkey? But it just so happened that the part of the road that Jenny died in was in part of the road that we couldn’t get around with the tractor. And to get to the place back in the woods where we dragged the dead carcasses to, we had to go down this road. But it was blocked. The road was narrow there, and one side dropped into the holler and the other side was a steep hillside so there was no way to get around it. My granddad thought he could drive the tractor over Jenny but us kids wouldn’t hear of that, so he had to drive the tractor all the way to the other end of the farm, then down the main road to the gate at the end of the farm road that led up into our farm…and back to the spot the road where Jenny lay dead. It was about a 4 mile trip to go around the farm just to return back to nearly the exact same spot that you had just left.


The old farm road.

But that done, a chain was quickly hooked to Jenny’s carcass and it was dragged back into the far corner of the farm woods. Jack closely followed along behind, head hanging low the whole time. Of course, we felt sorry for the old feller, but to us kids, this was prime entertainment so we followed along behind Jack and the tractor and thus became a makeshift funeral procession for a dead donkey.

After reaching a secluded spot back in the wood to leave the carcass, it was quickly unchained and left there. A few of the kids jumped on the tractor for the return trip, and the rest of us walked back. But everyone noticed that Jack was not accompanying us back home, he just remained there beside of Jenny’s carcass, nuzzling her.


The far corner of the farm woods.

The next morning, Jack didn’t show up for his morning bucket of oats, so we all figured he was still back in the woods with Jenny’s carcass. Mom told us to take the bucket of oats back to him and let him eat, and she told us to get a halter and lead him up to the pond for a drink of water. She reminded us to be gentle with Jack because as she put it "ol’ Jack is probably going to worry hisself to death." Well, us kids took off up through the meadow by the house, which was a shortcut to the far corner of the farm woods, and we made our way back to the spot where we figured Jack would be. Sure enough, we found him standing there beside of Jenny’s now bloating carcass, still nuzzling her to get up. We hollered for Jack to come and eat, and we waved the bucket of oats in the air for him to see. Jack turned to look at us, and even took a couple of steps toward us, but then he turned back to Jenny’s carcass, nuzzled her, and then just collapsed. We then took off running to him, hollering like a pack of banshee’s, but as we found out when we reached him, Jack was dead.


The old farmhouse.

We ran home and told Mom what had happened, and she didn’t really believe us, I reckon she figured that Jack probably just fell over from exhaustion or something. But she and Granddad got in the truck and drove back to the far corner of the farm woods, where she discovered that Jack was indeed dead, and he had fell right beside of Jenny. Mom was quick to point out to everyone how Jack and Jenny’s muzzles were touching. Mom stated matter-of-factly that Jack had grieved himself to death, and she commented that old people are like that too. She told us that when an old man or an old woman dies after they have been married for a long time, the other one would soon follow them to the grave. She continued with how it just seemed like old people can’t get along without each other, and that they seem to lose their will to live. Then she looked back at Jack and Jenny and sadly said, “Jack just didn't want to live without Jenny. Well anyway, they are better off now.”

A Good Idea?

I visited home over the 4th of July weekend, and while there I was struck with an idea. That idea was to walk a little of the North Mountain Trail at the top of our mountain. I had been down the trail many, many times over the years, and I remembered it was really pretty, very quiet and a good walk. I asked my Mom and my brother to go with me, and they did.

We walked the trail for about 5 minutes and came to the first overlook, I knew it was a good overlook but I also knew a better view awaited just around the next bend. Still, I was caught off-guard with the remarkable view that lay before me.



As I walked closer to the cliff, this was the vista that greeted me.



There was a nice breeze that day, especially considering the wind coming off of Spruce Knob smashed against the cliffs, creating a great updraft. It was a nice contrast to the nearly oppressive humidity. I looked out over Germany Valley for a few minutes then continued on down the trail to my favorite overlook. Along the way, we picked the ripening huckleberries, they were so good.




Then we arrived at a truly breathtaking sight. The strong mountain breezes slapped me in the face as I looked out over beautiful Germany Valley. The cliffs of North Mountain Rocks were a stark contrast to the lush valley below. The huge oak trees under the rocks looked miniature, and there was at least 100 feet from the cliffs to the treetops. I knew of the view that awaited me, but never have I been able to prepare. To me, this is the most beautiful sight in West Virginia.



Of course, no trip to the North Mountain Rocks would be complete without some mention of Old Fon, the legendary goatman who lures small children up to the cliffs and shoves them off. And then there was the obligatory mention of Der Belsnickle, the mean (or perhaps just misunderstood) German version of Santa Claus who came to these cliffs with my ancestors back in the early 1700's.



We also remembered a little girl named Haddie Whitecotton, a friend of my great-grandmaw Mary, who while helping make hay one day, wandered off up into the mountains, and who was found dead over a month later. She was about 5 or 6 years old. The search party found her body up on top of the mountain near a massive mound of boulders. Nobody could figure out how she would have gotten up there through all the rough terrain. Some figured that a mountain lion had carried her up there since her body was covered with leaves when they found her. Others suspected a giant hawk had carried her up on the cliffs. A giant hawk had been seen in the vicinity carrying off a small calf only a week before Haddie turned up missing. Nobody ever knew for sure, and now a lonely little white cross marks the location where Haddie's body was found 100 years ago.

My family has been on this mountain for so long, it seems that everywhere I look I am reminded of a story about one of them. This mountain has sustained my family for so long, we are a part of it. My blood is a part of this mountain, and this mountain is part of my blood. The mountain seems to remember all of us, and it reminds us when we listen.



So what do you think? Was it a good idea to go for a walk out on the North Mountain Rocks? I think so.

Summertime at the Sow's Ear

Always at this time of year, my mind drifts back to those summer days sitting on my Granddad’s front porch. I remember one lazy summer day on Granddad’s porch, I lived up to my nickname “Hacker”. They called me that because seldom was the time when I didn’t have an old hatchet with me. I don’t know why but it seemed that I always had a hatchet. I’d use it to clear brush if I wandered around in the woods, I’d throw it at tree's and blocks of wood to see if I could make it stick, or I’d just hold it above my head and let out a war whoop and make people think I had went off and was going to chop them to pieces. Regardless of what i was doing, I always seemed to have a hatchet with me. Well, on this one day and for some still unknown reason, I took to lightly hacking at my Granddad’s old dry-rotted porch posts. It didn’t take much until the posts simply crumbled away in places.


Granddad's house, "The Sow's Ear".

My Granddad tried to get me to stop but eventually just said, “If you destroy those posts, you’re goin’ to have to cut me some hickory poles to hold up the porch roof.” Well, I continued chipping away at the posts in the middle of the porch, even then I knew that the corner posts would hold up the roof. After I had hacked the old posts away, I went up in the woods and cut and trimmed up some nice hickory poles. I peeled the bark off of them, and they were a very pretty white color. We placed them in the spots where the old posts were, and nailed them up. They looked about a hundred times better than the old posts did, and even my granddad said it was a big improvement and said, “Hackey, I reckon you done me a good deed.”

That was until my Aunt Nawey came home from work. She about had a conniption, and said it looked like a bunch of hillbillies lived there with the hickory poles holding up the porch roof. She marched over to my Dad and told him what I had done, and wanted him to replace the porch posts. As luck would have it, we had a few old cedar porch posts there from where we had recently remodeled our front porch, and Nawey said that would be fine. The next day, me and Granddad put up the new porch posts and all was again right with the world. Nawey threatened to skin me alive if I hacked at the new porch posts! After they passed Nawey’s inspection, my Granddad informed her that he liked the hickory poles better and told her “No matter how hard you try, you ain’t never goin’ to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear!” (I bet you can’t tell that I could get away with anything with my Granddad!)

In those summer days of my youth, we always seemed to have the same routine every day, about noon we’d go down to Riverton and get a few snacks and to catch up on the local gossip for the day, and then after about an hour or so, we’d start back up the mountain, only coming home through the Bland Hills.

Bland Hills

Bland Hills road was always so quiet and peaceful, and we’d poke along on our way home, stopping to look at anything unusual that caught our eye like grazing deer, an occasional hawk flying overhead, or perhaps some blooming patch of wildflowers alongside the country road. Seldom was the day when we’d pass another vehicle on our trip, and it was because of this that Bland Hills was chosen as the location for my Granddad to let me drive his truck, even though I was underage and still a couple of years away from getting a drivers license.

Looking back, I’m sure that he let me drive coming back up the mountain rather than driving down the mountain was so I couldn’t really let the truck get away from me on the uphill drag. I learned to drive fairly fast, and I had driven our car with an automatic transmission before so that wasn’t an issue for me, but figuring out a clutch was entirely different. It also didn’t help that Granddad’s truck was a 1967 Ford F-150 with a 3-speed transmission on the steering column! I don’t know whoever came up with the concept of a 3-speed transmission, but whoever it was should be dragged out into the woods and shot. As I recall, first gear was way up on top on the front of the column, second gear was all the way down on the front of the column, and somewhere about halfway on the steering column you could, if you were lucky, manage to finagle and contort the belligerent beast into third gear. Reverse was one of those directions that remained a mystery to me in the old truck, it was supposedly somewhere through the magical corridor, down by the magical mirror and was only attainable, I’m convinced, by saying a few quatrains of an old Pennsylvania Dutch hex. Luckily, on Bland Hills road I didn’t have much use for third gear or reverse, so I was good to go. I remember Granddad would drive over toward the backside of Riverton, and pull off the road and let me under the wheel, and I’d take over right at the foot of Dolly Ridge. Try as I might to ease out on the clutch upon taking off, I’d always either lurch forward and kill the motor, or I’d tear out throwing gravels and dirt for several yards behind me. All my Granddad would ever say is, “Take ‘er easy, hackey, take ‘er easy!”


Granddad & my cousin Poodies.

Once I got took off, I was pretty good at it and didn’t have much difficulty in shifting gears since most of the way was in first gear, and once we got up on the ridge, I’d shift into 2nd. Soon after getting to the top of the ridge, we would come to the forks in the road, the left going towards Monkeytown (which was were home was) and the right going back into Brown Bear Lodge.

Well, Granddad would always say, “I believe we’ll ride back this way today and see if anything is different.” There never was anything different back in Brown Bear Lodge, I'm fairly sure that nothing had changed there since the Yankee's marched up Dolly Ridge after the Battle of Riverton way back when the North invaded America. But going right at the Forks did add a couple of miles on to the trip since the road back into Brown Bear Lodge was a dead end and we’d have to backtrack out of there. I remember we’d drive by the old Cunningham Cemetery where two sets of my great-so-many-grandparents are buried, and Granddad would inevitable tell me about them, and tell me about how years ago they had a problem with groundhogs back there, and the groundhogs had gnawed and dug their way into some of the graves and were bringing out scraps of clothing from the graves. Of course, this was very upsetting to the people who had loved ones buried there, and several men set around with guns and waited for hours to shoot the groundhogs. After killing several groundhogs from that spot, then men stuffed rocks into the groundhog holes and covered them over the best they could. He said now people kept watch for any sign of groundhogs returning even though that had happened several decades ago, and no other action was needed. It was almost as if he shared the cautionary tale with me to keep alive an ongoing feud between humans and groundhogs.


The old Cunningham Cemetery.

Eventually, I’d have to turn around, and I had a favorite spot for it, remember how I said I could never find reverse in the old truck, well I got around this by turning around at a wide spot in the road near a big open meadow. It was wide enough to swing the truck around without having to put it in reverse!


This is the meadow that has the wide spot I used to turn around in.

After backtracking the Brown Bear Lodge road, and then onto Bland Hills road toward home, I would creep along ever so slowing, sometimes stopping to see something of interest, and all the while learning how to take off without popping the clutch. I’d drive to what we called the “First Hill” near the main highway, at which point I’d pull over and let Granddad take over the wheel again, and he’d drive us on home.

A typical view in the Bland Hills.

Once we got home we’d sit on the front porch and talk and tell stories, or find something that needed done, like poking around in the outbuildings or climbing up in the attic at Granddad house. It was always an adventure, you never knew what you were going to find. I remember one time we were up in the attic digging out some old boxes of stuff. The attic was but a crawlspace, and you had to be really careful so as to only place your weight on the rafters of the old house. I recall that it was so hot and stifling that you could barely breathe, and I’d crawl around, find a box, and drag it back to the opening of the attic and hand it out to my granddad on the porch roof. I remember one time I kept noticing the electric wire had been gnawed by a rat in several places and I commented to granddad, “If that rat gnaws through the rubber coating of that wire, it’ll have a bad day.” Well sure enough, after crawling further back into the attic, I saw the skeletal remains of the rat, still stuck into the electric wire where it had succeeded in biting its way into oblivion. Really, I don’t know what ever kept that place from burning down with the gnawed electric wires, the sawdust insulation and the wiring system that my granddad figured out and installed.

We’d then dig through the boxes that were placed “overhead” for the past several decades, there’d be old pictures, school papers from the kids, sometimes knick-knacks, and various other items. It really was like sorting through Pandora’s Box. If something caught our eye, we’d lay it to the side so we could take it with us. Everything else was placed back into the boxes and put back into the attic, where those treasures remain to this day. I wonder what I would find if I were to look through those boxes today?

Snakes and more Snakes.

Today I thought I’d write another post about snakes. I wrote a blog post about snakes a few months ago, click here to read it.

I remember when we lived up Johnson Holler we had to watch whenever we went outside, it was a real snakey place. And they weren’t just any snakes that seemed to be all over the place, they were timber rattlesnakes. Many times, we’d kill some rattlers whenever we’d go out to feed the dog. It is no wonder that place was overrun with snakes, it was right at the foot of North Mountain and it was a very rocky and rough place.

I remember one evening when we were coming home, Dad got a good surprise. You see, right before you entered our place, you had to get out and open a gate that blocked the road. There was an old spring box located near the gate, and since Dad had opened this gate hundreds of times before, he didn’t think anything of it nor was he overly careful in looking around. He just got out of the truck, walked over, grabbed the gate latch, and started to pull open the gate.

About that time, he was startled by the unmistakable singing of a rattlesnake. He instinctively jumped back, and it is a good thing because as he was jumping back, the rattler struck at him. Dad was just far enough away to where it missed him. The rattler then slithered out into the road. All of us kids were screaming, just sure that the giant serpent was gonna eat us all. Dad, a little more calm than the rest of us, ran back to the truck and grabbed out a shovel that he always carried with him. Dad meant to kill the rattler with the shovel, and since he was now armed, he was a little more confident when he went after the big snake. About the time Dad got to the rattler, the rattler rared up to where it was nearly staring Dad right in the eye, and Mom hollered out the truck window, “He’s trying to charm you!” We all knew how a snake will try to charm its quarry by doing a little mesmerizing dance…it will lull someone or some thing into a false sense of security, which will end with a fatal bite.

Well, Dad wasn’t having none of that, so he whomped down on the big rattler with the shovel. As soon as the shovel connected with the snake, there was a loud crack and Dad stood there holding a broken handle of a shovel! The big rattler wasn’t even phased, and it look pissed off! Dad then ran back to the truck and looked around for something else to kill the rattler with, but could find nothing so he ran up on the road bank and grabbed a big tree limb and a few rocks. First, Dad threw the rather large rocks at the rattler, and connected with it with a few of them. The last one hit the snake in the head and knocked it down into the road. Dad then ran up with the tree limb and beat the snake repeatedly in the head until it was dead. It was quite an ordeal. It was such a large snake, we measured it, it was 9 feet long and was 8 inches around. It also had 12 rattlers and a button! It was a monster.

I remember Dad saying it was the granddaddy of them all, and he figured it was the snake that came over on “Noey’s Ark”! Dad said he’d never seen anything like it. It was in late summer and it was quite dry that year, so Dad took the dead snake and laid it over the garden fence. We all knew that if you hung a snake over a garden fence it would rain until you took it off. Sure enough, that night it just poured the rain and continued to do so for the next week or so. Finally, my Grandmaw Mary told my Dad to take that snake off the garden fence because if he didn’t she feared it was going to flood.

People might laugh, but there has to be something to those old tales.

Another story I’ll share is about how one time Grandmaw Mary’s milk cow stopped giving milk. Grandmaw couldn’t figure it out, all of a sudden the cow seemed to dry up. Grandmaw puzzled on it, and come to the conclusion that something had to be milking the cow out, so she started keeping a close eye on the cow. Granny suspected a milk thief. Sure enough, on one of her frequent checks on the cow, she caught the culprit…a big blacksnake sucking on the cow. Now I know a snake ain’t supposed to be able to suck, but my Granny seen it with her own eyes. Granny picked up a hoe handle that was there in the stone cow barn and cracked the blacksnake with it. She had to be real careful so it wouldn’t bite the teats of the cow. Well, the blacksnake coiled up and Granny proceeded to kill it with the hoe handle, and she dragged it outside of the cow barn. She said it was unreal the amount of milk that poured out of that snake when she stretched it out.

North Mountain rocks.

I also remember a story that my Grandmaw Mary used to tell about a girl named Hallie who lived further up on the mountain. Granny grew up near there. She said that up on the mountain, right near the frost line, there used to be a house that was owned by a man and a woman by the last name of Wildfang. Granny said they were real good people, always willing to give a helping hand to anyone who needed it. She said that the man’s name was Hanse and the woman’s name was Mag, and they had tried for years to have a child but it seemed that Mag would always miscarry late in the pregnancy.

Eventually, Mag was able to carry a child to term and gave birth to Hallie. She said that old man and woman Wildfang doted on Hallie something fierce. They gave her anything that she wanted and never made her do any kind of chores or anything. Granny would tell how every morning after breakfast, Mag would give Hallie a cup of buttermilk and a piece of bread and Hallie would carry the treat around with her as she walked around the yard and poked around the barn. Mag and Hanse were very happy and proud of their little girl, and talked about how smart she was, and how fast she learned just by watching things around her. Grandmaw said that one morning, Hallie got her usual snack and walked outside, and seemingly made a beeline for the corncrib. Mag said this wasn’t typical because usually Hallie would walk around the house and look at the flowers and go out to the barn and look at the baby animals and such, but really she didn’t think too much on it. But Hallie was so intent on her walk toward the corncrib that something just struck Mag to follow her that morning, and she did.

My granny told that when Mag opened the door to the corncrib, she saw Hallie sitting on the floor among the cobs, and a snake was drinking the buttermilk out of the cup, and Hallie was telling it, ‘You be sure and eat your bread, too.” Mag, of course, was quite startled and said to Hallie, “Girl, what in the world do you think you are doing feeding that snake,” but Hallie didn’t answer her. She then hurried to Hallie and noticed that she had a real blank stare in her eyes, and Mag knew at once that Hallie had been charmed by the snake. Mag got up and killed the snake, who had kept drinking the buttermilk this whole time, and as soon as she dealt the fatal blow to the snake, Hallie took to screaming at her mother, “Stop killing him, please stop it, you’re killing him.”

Grandmaw Mary, at this point in the story, would say that most people thought that the girl had been witched but nobody could ever figure out who done it. Granny would then continue the story by telling of how after the snake was dead, Hallie became listless, she had no energy, she had no appetite, and Hanse and Mag got really concerned about her. They consulted the doctor down in Riverton, but he couldn’t find anything wrong with her. He just told them to give her Cod Liver Oil. And they did, but it didn’t help. Well, this went on for a couple of weeks, and Hanse and Mag went to a woman in the area who was known as a good witch. She told them that there was only one thing that could be done, the snake had charmed little Hallie and unless they could somehow break the charm spell that the snake put on her, that Hallie would die. The old witch woman then said a few words over her, and all of a sudden the old woman got sick and took to throwing up a vile green fluid. She raced outside and took to pulling up grass out of the yard and eating it, but she kept throwing up over and over. She managed to tell Hanse and Mag that the snake had a powerful hold over Hallie, and that it had charmed her like nothing she had ever seen, and it was too powerful for her. Well, Hanse helped the old woman back into the house and put her into bed, and he thanked her for trying, and he and Mag took Hallie and returned home.

The next morning, word came to them that the old witch woman had died the night before, and it looked like her whole face and neck was covered with snakebites. Hanse and Mag were doubly concerned over Hallie now, and they relayed everything that the old witch woman had told them during their visit with her the day before. After that everyone believed that evil was afoot, and word spread about Hallie’s condition and the old woman’s death. Granny said that soon after that, there were all kinds of preachers that went to the Wildfangs and prayed over Hallie, and one had even come from all the way over at Harrisonburg, VA, to pray over her, but nothing helped. A few days later, Hallie died right after Hanse and Mag had breakfast. Granny said that Hanse and Mag went out of their heads with grief and that they couldn’t even prepare little Hallie to be buried. My Granny’s grandmother, MaryAnna, went and cleaned the body and laid it out for them. Granny said that she’d always been told that while laying out little Hallie, her granny noticed that there was a mark on her that looked like a snakebite, and it was located right over her heart!

Soon after Hallie was laid to rest, Hanse and Mag moved away, Granny said she always heard they moved off to “Ohio somewheres”, but that their old house stood for many years after they moved away. Nobody would ever live in the house after that, and eventually it fell down. Grandmaw Mary would then conclude with telling exactly where the house was located and she would tell that you could still see the foundation of it if you looked real close.

So, do any of you all out there have any snake stories to share? I’d love to hear them.

A Sticky Situation

It’s about that time of year again, time to make maple syrup. Have any of you readers out there tried making maple syrup before? I have. I guess I always was sort of a food purist, perhaps it is more like I’ve always been curious to see whether I could follow some of the old-timey traditional methods of making stuff at home, so it was only a matter of time before I tried my hand at making maple syrup. I remember I was about 15 years old or so, and I had talked to a few of the older folks in the neighborhood about making syrup and they told me how it was done, though I didn’t let on that I was actually going to try my hand at it for fear of getting to much advice that would take the fun out of it.

I remember that I needed a spout to insert into the tree to drain the sugar water out, and I didn’t want to use metal or plastic pipe for a spout (which undoubtedly would have been the most convenient). No way, I was doing this the old fashioned way and I wanted a wooden spout. I hunted the woods for hours looking for a straight stick about an inch wide, then using my pocket knife I split it open. I cleaned out the doty center of the stick and I had two little troughs with which to siphon away the sugar water from the tree. I did try my hand at hollowing out a whole stick but it was just too time consuming, so my idea worked well enough.

I then took Dad’s wood bore and after scouting out the biggest sugar maple trees behind our house on the hillside, I took boring holes into the trees. I then inserted my little wooden “pipe troughs” into the holes, and had then dripping down into my catchment containers. After waiting a few minutes, I saw the first few droplets of sugar water trying to run down into my waiting mason jar. (Yes, mason jar…this was a small time operation!). I soon learned through trial and error that if I slanted my bored hole slightly upward, the sap flowed out a little better. Also, I found that a little spot of chewing gum dammed up the excess sugar water and made the sap flow out my troughs a little better, as well as securing my troughs in the hole. I know I must have drilled 20 or so trees, and I had jars, cans, cups, buckets and pretty much anything else that would catch sugar water placed under nearly every maple tree on the hillside. This was about mid-morning, and as the day progressed and it got a little warmer, the sap started running faster. Some of them ran like a slow running faucet. Since my catchment containers were rather small, I nearly ran myself to death emptying them into my larger 5 gallon bucket which sat at the bottom of the hill. Eventually, I focused on the larger and more productive trees and abandoned operations at the small trees. After a few hours, my 5 gallon bucket was full of sweet tasting maple sap. It looked like water, had the consistency of water, but it had a slightly sweet taste. After getting what I believed would be aplenty maple sugar water, I gathered up my jars, cans, cups, etc. and placed a piece of clay mud into the bored holes of the tree to keep out moisture so as to prevent rot.

An old drawing of a maple sugar camp.

So with my 5-gallon bucket of maple sugar water in hand, I talked Mom into allowing me the use of her kitchen to boil down my syrup. She told me I could but that if I made a mess, I’d have to clean it up. So, using her big stockpot, I filled it about ¾ full with sugar water and started heating it. Soon it was at a boil, and I kept adding more sugar water to the pot as it evaporated away. It took several hours of this, but eventually the boiling liquid started turning the lightest shade of brown, and I just knew that soon I’d have syrup. I couldn’t help but sample my work frequently and it was starting to get slightly sweeter, but still nowhere near syrup. So my pot kept boiling and boiling, and it was clear that I’d get no more than a quart of syrup out of this, but that was still fine. Well, about the time my pot had about a quart of liquid in it, I tasted it again…nope, still very watery…so I had no choice but to keep boiling. Everyone had told me that it took a lot of sugar water to make syrup but I figured I had enough. I had thought about going back out to the trees to get more sap, but Mom told me that I’d better wait and see if my experiment worked before I went and made more work for myself. I’m sure it was more like she wanted me out of the kitchen since I’d been there for hours and hours. So I acquiesced and kept on a-boilin’!

It soon became apparent that I wasn’t going to have much maple syrup at all when I got it boiled down. As it was now, I had less than a cup full in the pot and it was still rather watery. I became resolved right then to continue and get whatever syrup I could out of this…no matter how little… since I had spent all day at it. When the liquid had nearly all boiled away, I tasted my treasured substance, and lo and behold, it was just right! I had made maple syrup! However, when I measured it out, I had just over 3 Tablespoons of it (out of 5 gallon of maple sugar water). Everyone got a good laugh over that, but let me tell you, that was good maple syrup. I shared it with everyone there, and we all got a taste, and everyone agreed that it was really good.

And that's when the real fun started. Mom came out to the kitchen and told me to clean up my mess. I’d been really careful not to make too much of one since I knew I’d be the one to have to clean it. I washed the stockpot, and wiped off the stove and table, took my bucket outside, and thought I had it all done, then Mom discovered something. She looked around and had noticed that there was a sticky film all over the walls and ceiling, over the cabinets and refrigerator, over the countertops and the ceiling fan, even on the window panes! It seems that while my maple sugar water was evaporating, the steam had miniscule amounts of sugar in it, and it had coated everything in the kitchen. Hot, soapy water was the only thing that would cut the stickiness, and Mom said we had to clean the whole kitchen (yes, she helped!). She really didn’t say too much to me, probably because if she started she wouldn’t have been able to stop! It was way up into the night before we got the remnants of my first and only ill-fated attempt at making my own maple syrup. So for the love of God and all that is Holy, if you decide to make your own homemade maple syrup, take my advice and do it someplace other than your mother’s kitchen. I old guess the old timers had a reason for making sugar camps after all!

Granddaddy Don

I remember well my Granddaddy Don. He was married to my sainted Grandmaw Mary. They lived in the house that is now beside my parents, as a matter of fact Granddaddy Don built both houses.

I was about 9 years old when Granddaddy Don died, and his passing signaled the end of an era for the whole family. You see, Granddaddy Don ruled the family with an iron fist, and he was a cantankerous old feller. I was always told that he was the way he was because he was the only boy among his siblings, and that his parents petted on him something fierce, so nothing was ever too good for Granddaddy Don, and he expected this to continue throughout his life.

Charley, Jennie and Don Burns (center) about 1902.

That’s not to say Granddaddy Don wasn’t a hard worker or that he felt like he was entitled to something, quite the opposite was true, Granddaddy worked extremely hard, he just wanted things to be his way.

When thinking of Granddaddy Don, I am always reminded of how he pinched pennies. In the summers, his grandkids would always like to visit for a few weeks. Granddaddy had in his head a set amount of food that each kid would eat, and if the kid ate more than Granddaddy thought he should, Granddaddy would send a bill for the remainder of the food to their parents. Granddaddy also did all of the grocery shopping, he said Grandmaw always spent too much money, and wouldn’t even shop around for better deals. Granddaddy was known to travel several miles out of his way to save a nickel! He was also honest, just as if you owed him money, he expected it paid in full, and if he owed you money, you always got paid in full as well. One time, my dad said he borrowed $10 off of Granddaddy to go out on when he was a teenager, and for the bill Granddaddy told him to just buy him two bags of grain for the milk cow. Dad bought the grain the next weekend when he got paid, and the grain bill was $10.03. Dad put the grain in the grainhouse and told Granddaddy that would make them even, and gave him the receipt. “Hell,” Granddaddy said, “I owe you 3 cents hunky, you’ll never get ahead in this life if you don’t collect what’s owed you.” It was widely known that my Dad was Granddaddy Don’s favorite grandchild, and Dad even lived with Granddaddy and Grandmaw when he was in elementary school.

The steam shovel wreck on North Mountain during the building of Route 33. Granddaddy Don was 3rd from the right in the back row ( in the toboggan). About 1930.

Later on in years when I knew him, Granddaddy was really crotchety! Like I said, he had his ways of doing things, and one time he told my uncle Wood to get him “about that much soft drink”, measuring off on his index finger how much pop he wanted. Well, Uncle Wood always was one to cut up and have a good time (people tell me I’m a lot like him) so he measured up his finger on the outside of the glass and got Granddaddy just a small amount of pop in his glass and gave it to Granddaddy. To this Granddaddy said, “Hell boy, you’re a might stingy with your soft drink ain’t you?” Then turned to my Grandmaw and said, “Mary, I believe the polio has done affected his brain.”

Grandmaw Mary and Granddaddy Don, about 1950.

I remember I’d visit with Granddaddy and Grandmaw a lot when I was a kid, you just had to give Granddaddy a wide berth because you never knew what for mood he’d be in. And for the love of God, you never wanted to speak when he was watching the evening news. He sure loved Dan Rather, and every time Dan Rather would sign off the air by saying, “Good Night, America”. Granddaddy would say, “Goodnight, Dan”. And then you were allowed to talk without fear of him scraping his knuckles across your head and telling you to shut-up. That was his favorite way of silencing a child, “peeling the bark off the old sky-pate” as he called it.

Granddaddy Don in his favorite chair.

One time while I was visiting, Granddaddy was having his favorite snack, pudding and vanilla wafers. I noticed that after every bite, he would say, “Nam, Nam”. I thought this was pretty funny, but I didn’t dare laugh. Then he took a bite and didn’t say anything and I couldn’t help myself, so I piped up and said, “You forgot to say Nam, Nam”. Wooo, that got him, and he nearly came unglued, he grabbed my pudding and cookies from me and said, “Just for that little boy, you’ll get nothing more”. I soon headed out to Grandmaw where I’d be safe, and she said, “That crazy old man”, and gave me back my pudding and cookies, and told me to just stay away from him for a while. The next day, I went back over to see them again, and Granddaddy mistook me for another grandkid, and said, “Hell boy, I believe you have some birthday money coming don’t you” and he gave me a dollar. I gladly took it, thanked him and left. My grandmaw just smiled, she knew it wasn’t my birthday but I couldn’t disagree with Granddaddy or he’d get belligerent. Later that day, my cousin whose birthday it was came by for his birthday money, and Granddaddy said, “Hell, I done give you your birthday, you’ll get nothing more out of me.” You know, I probably should have given the money to my cousin, but I never did like him that well, so instead I spent it on hot sausages!

I have lots more stories about Granddaddy Don that I will share in coming posts, but I can see this one is getting a might long. If I were to make this post longer you might say, “Hell, I believe polio affected his brain.”

The Devil's Apron Strings

There never was a shortage on rocks on the Burns property, and in that we were truly “blessed”.

On the Burns Property...my Mom & Dad's house.

Grandmaw Mary used to always tell us that the devil broke his apron strings when he walked over Burns property. She’d tell about a great fight between God and the devil. In the days when the world was young, God & the devil each lived in separate caves high up on the North Mountain Rocks, and as in every telling of the epic battle between good and evil, they got into a great rock fight. The devil would throw rocks at God and God would in turn throw rocks at the devil. According to the legend, when gathering more rocks for an impending battle, the devil broke his apron strings while carrying a giant load of rocks over the Burns property. Just as the devil broke his apron strings and lost his rocks, God attacked and defeated the devil, forever driving him from Germany Valley. I’ve often wondered if this story has deeper meaning, perhaps it has its roots in the early settlement of Germany Valley, back when the Native Americans who knew of the valley referred to it as “the valley of the demons”.

The North Mountain Rocks that tower over the Burns property.

The rocks probably came from the North Mountain rock cliffs that tower over Burns property. Over the eons of time, rocks flaked off and rolled down the mountain onto the property. As soil formed, it just covered the rocks and so on. Regardless of how they got there, I know we’d pick rocks for hours, and no matter how many were picked, there'd always be more.

In our futile attempts to pick all the rocks from our garden, we quickly realized that we’d just have to settle for having the larger rocks being picked out of the garden if we ever hoped to get anything planted. There were huge rock piles all around the garden, proving that past generations had struggled with this very thing.

A view of the North Fork rocks from Germany Valley.

The most notable rock pile in the garden was the one with a huge lilac bush growing out of it. Family lore maintained that during Civil War days, the Yankee army had camped in our garden. When hearing about the approaching Confederate homeguard, a strongbox full of gold that was to be used to pay the soldiers was buried under that rock pile. I remember during the late 1980’s when dozer work was being done on one end of that rock pile, many family members gathered around and cast an ever-watchful eye on the activities. To date, this strongbox has never been found and the family legend lives on.