Camp Chase

Today finds me thinking about my gr-gr-gr-gr-grandfather, Joseph Lantz, and the horrors he must have witnessed and was subjected to while in the Confederate Service. He was a Captain in the North Fork Militia,and was in active during the Battle of Riverton.





The Battle of Riverton site.

Captured near the end of the War Between the States (or as some of us were brought up hearing, "The War of Northern Aggression") my grandfather was held prisoner in Camp Chase Prison in Ohio. What pure hell this must have been for him and his companions. Camp Chase Prison was opened in May 1861 and remained open throughout the War. It was located about 4 miles from Columbus, Ohio. The prison held a large population of men from the mountains of West Virginia. For these men, their world must have been turned upside down. Not only were they prisoners, but they were prisoners in a foreign land. To these men of the rugged mountains, I’m sure Camp Chase was like a foreign country. Even today, when I am out of my mountains, I feel a great unease and get the feeling that if only I could get back into the mountains, then all would be right with the world. How these men must have gazed and wished for the mountains that they knew lay far to the East.



My gr-gr-gr-gr-grandfather, Joseph Lantz.

Growing up, I heard stories from the older folks about the living conditions at Camp Chase Prison. Of course, they had heard these stories from their elders, and theirs before them. A few former prisoners from Pendleton County described Camp Chase prison as a big mud hole. They said the water was dirty and the food was wormy. They told of how the men would sit around and tell stories of home and what they were going to go when the War was over. I recall hearing a story about how one man in Camp Chase prison had made a pet out of a big rat, and one time the rations were so scarce that a bunch of his cohorts killed the rat and made soup out of it.

One of the best Camp Chase prison recollections, to me, was recorded by the Hammons Family titled, “Camp Chase”. At the beginning of the track, Burl Hammons talks about stories that he grew up hearing about Camp Chase. He talked of how the men were mistreated at the Yankee prison and how the prisoners simply wanted to go home, so much so that it consumed them. The story continues with how the Yankee captain liked fiddle music and told his Confederate captives whichever man played him the best fiddle tune, he would set that man free. If this is a true story, can you imagine how much heart and soul went into this fiddle contest, these men would have been playing for their very lives. As the contest progressed, one man played a tune that absolutely floored the Yankee captain, because it was just that good. For all the people who like fiddle music, they know how the fiddle puts lyrics right into the tune and that the tune tells the story. Well, after the contest, the Yankee captain lived up to his word and gave the man his freedom, but before the man left the captain asked, “What was the name of that fiddle tune?” to which the man replied, “It’s a tune that I came up with, and the name of it is “Camp Chase!” I don’t know of the Hammons story is true, but I do know that I can’t listen to the tune, “Camp Chase” without hearing the suffering of the prisoners, and hearing the hopes of freedom and home that these men held so dear. I can sympathize with these men who longed for the mountains for Camp Chase would have been both a physical and mental Hell for them.

I’m sure my grandfather tried for the rest of his life to forget Camp Chase, but at least he got to return home to his beloved Germany Valley after the War. So many prisoners died at Camp Chase and are buried there.



Camp Chase Cemetery. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Here's a Youtube video of Betty Vornbrock doing a great version of "Camp Chase".

Old Time Ways

I thought I'd share a little bit from the book "Our Roots Are In The Mountains" by a distant cousin of mine, Jocie (Thompson) Armentrout. The book details the local heritage and early customs of Pendleton & Randolph Counties in West Virginia. This little book has so much information in it, you won't be sorry if you can find a copy of it.

Page 21 "Note on Customs of the Period"

"In the pre-Civil War period and long afterward doctors were not required to register births. Folks sometimes neglected to name their babies for a long time, even as much as four or five years. They just called them "Sonny" or "Sissy"."

This was the case in my family as well, only it was long after the Civil War period. My grandfather, Richard Henry Burns, was one of these babies who wasn't given a name until he was the age of 5. My granddad just went by "Baby" Burns, or sometimes "B. Burns" on records of the time. His parents were waiting until he grew into a name, and since they lived way up on the mountain, there really wasn't any pressing need to name him. When my granddad was five years old, the county forced my great-grandparents to name their son, but only because my great-grandmaw was pregnant again and they could only have one unnamed child at a time. So, they studied on it, and named my granddad Richard (nobody knew where the name came from) and they gave him the middle name "Henry" after his great-uncle Henry J. "Uncle Sonny" Burns. I got my middle name from my granddad, so by diffusion I got my middle name from Uncle Sonny as well. I often wonder though if anyone ever called Uncle Sonny "Sun Burns"?

Also, why did my great-grandparents, after having 5 years to come up with a name, hang the name Richard on my granddad? With the last name of Burns, you have to be careful what name you give a child (we all know Dick is short for Richard). But it didn't stop there, oh no, my Dad was also named Richard (Richard Junior Burns) but he goes by Jake! Then, my mom and dad named my brother Richard Jason who goes by Jason. So none of the three generation of Richard Burns' were ever known as Dick Burns though; they went by Rich, Jake and Jason, respectively. I suppose I am fortunate to have been the 2nd born and got the middle name of of my grandfather rather than his first name. To think, all of these names are simply the result of the county forcing my great-grandparents to name their 5 year old son!

"Our Roots Are In The Mountains" continues on page 20 with:

"...money was so scarce and all kinds of merchandise was so difficult to obtain that "trades" were often made that would amaze us today. One small farm in Pendleton County was traded for a jacket pattern, and a larger farm was once paid for with a rifle gun."

Again, I can relate this to my family. Family stories maintain that my great-great-great granddaddy George Burns was land rich but money poor and would "sell" land for whatever he needed or wanted. Land was seen as an inexhaustible resource. It is told that you could stand up on top of North Mountain and as far as you could see down in the valley was the land belonging to George Burns. Stories tell how he sold the back side of North Mountain (about 500 acres) for a horse and buggy, and how he traded the North Mountain flats, known as Buffalo Bottom (about 200 acres), for a bottle of whiskey! All of this land now sells for at least $1,000 acre, and a great deal of it is now part of the Monongahela National Forest.

Times sure were different then. I'd like to find some land deals like that now.

I hope you all enjoy hearing about some of the information found in "Our Roots Are In The Mountains" by Jocie (Thompson) Armentrout as much as I did. You can expect more posts based on this wonderful book in the future.

A Handful of Pinto Beans

Ever since I was a little boy, I’ve always wanted to be a farmer. I can’t ever remember a time when I wasn’t drawn to the soil as if by some unseen power. At an early age, I was told that I had a green thumb and many's the time that people would ask me to plant their gardens, bushes, etc. because they said, “If anybody can get them to grow, Matthew can.”

Milkweed Ladies on the Mallow Farm.

The very first thing that I ever remember planting was a handful of pinto beans. I remember Mom was looking over a bag of store-boughten pinto beans that she was getting ready to cook (looking over them I’m sure you know, means that she was sorting through them and picking out cracked beans and the occasional pebble.) Well, she had a few beans picked out that were unsuitable to be cooked and I asked her if I could have them. She said that I could, but not to eat them because raw beans will give you a stomachache. I said that I wouldn’t eat them, but that I was going to plant them. It was early spring then, way too early to be planting anything on the mountain, but Mom told me to go ahead and plant them but to plant them in the corner of the garden (she told me to put them in the corner because she knew I wouldn’t let them plow it up after I planted the beans, even though they had little to no chance of growing). Well, I remember I went out and poked a hole in the ground with my pointer finger, and dropped a bean into the cold soil. I covered them up the some dirt and I repeated this until I had all of the broken and misshapen pinto beans planted. I checked on them several times that first day, and occasionally over the next few days, but I soon lost interest in waiting to see the first sprouts of the beans that I was just sure would soon pop through the soil. A few weeks later when the garden was plowed up in preparation for the spring planting, Mom noticed that there were five little bean plants growing in the corner of the garden. She called me over and showed them to me, and of course there never was a bean plant that ever looked so good as the ones that I had grown. Everyone was shocked that the plants had grown from the cracked pintos that had been sorted out of a store-boughten bag of pinto beans!

We tended to the beans that spring and they were getting up pretty good in size when my family decided to move out of Johnson Holler to over across the mountain to the Mallow Farm. The main reason was because my brother Jason had started to school the year before and Dad would drive him over North Fork Mountain every day to catch the school bus in Monkeytown, and this fall I would be starting to Kindergarten, so Mom and Dad figured it’d be better if we lived on the same side of the mountain as where we’d be attending school rather than risking the trip across the mountain every day all winter. The Mallow Farm was also closer to Dad’s work, it was only about a mile from the gate of the farm whereas Johnson Holler was about 15 miles. The third, but not the least important reason for moving out of Johnson Holler was because we wouldn’t have to pay rent. I remember rent at the old house in Johnson Holler was $50 a month, plus you had to supply your own buckets to catch the water that leaked through the roof when it rained. This was so the water wouldn’t rot out the floors (yes, the house was that good!). But on the Mallow Farm, there was no rent but we did have to tend to the farm. It seemed like a good deal to all of us, we got the run of a 585-acre farm just for taking care of it. I suppose another reason why we moved to the farm was that my Grandmaw Henry had just passed away and Mom and Dad were taking care of five of Dad’s siblings, of which the youngest was just 3 years older than my brother Jason and the Mallow Farm was more conducive to raising a passel of “heatherns” as we were frequently called, than most anywhere else they could think of.

So that was the long way around of telling you that I never got to harvest those first beans that I ever planted. We moved out of Johnson Holler early that summer, and had to leave the old garden behind. I’m sure the deer and groundhogs had a field day with it. Over the years I have often wondered if those pinto beans ever amounted to anything.

Germany Valley...my home.

After moving to the farm, we have plenty of ground to tend to. Since Mom and Dad were raising all of us kids then, our family garden was easily 2 acres in size, one acres of which was planted in potatoes. I remember there were plenty of “garden suppers” as we called them, suppers where everything we had came out of the garden. I don’t ever remember going hungry though. We also raised hogs, chickens, sheep, ducks, guineas, cows and a horse. The sheep, cows and the one old horse were owned by the man who owned the farm but we tended to them the same as we did our own.

We only saw the owner about once a month, if that, except during haying season, during which time he would be over every day cutting this or that hayfield. I remember that he had two teenage sons who were smitten with my Aunts who lived with us then. They were all about the same age, and every day for lunch they’d come over to the house to visit. They said they came for some cool spring water, but they wasn’t fooling anybody, they was a-tryin’ to court my aunts. Nothing ever amounted to their advances, Mom said that the girls were too young to be interested in boys, even though the girls were the same age as the boys. Mom always told the girls not to be a farmer’s wife, because they would work you to death and they’d find themselves broke down with a passel of kids before they was 40. I find it ironic now just how picky Mom was for us all, we really didn’t have a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out of, but she always expected us to do better for ourselves. From where I’m sitting now, I’d have thought she’d have welcomed one of my aunts marrying up with the farmer’s sons, but she never did. But I reckon it goes back to the days when our family had money, and although the “uppity” customs that went along with the old ways got passed on down to us, the money didn’t. My granny always said we was “poor genteel”.

Late Autumn on the Mallow Farm

We might have been poor as church mice but there were things we done that were atypical of our neighbors in a similar financial predicament, for example, we always had to eat everything with a fork, finger foods were just unacceptable and were considered beneath us…my mother still won’t eat a sandwich! All these years later, I’m still guilty of eating everything with a fork, or at least I have to have a fork in my hand while I’m eating, even if I don’t use it. Another thing was we always had to have clean sheets and pillowcases on our beds. We knew a lot of people who were as poor as we were who didn’t have sheets or pillowcases, and we just thought that was awful. The ones we had might have been worn out, but by crackies we had them and used them! Another thing was our shoes had to be clean. It didn’t matter what we had been doing, we weren’t allowed to go anywhere in dirty shoes…not even scuffed up shoes…for that was a sure sign of “trashiness”. I still find myself now, whenever I meet someone, the first thing I look at is their shoes. I’ve found over the years that this is a pretty good method of sizing people up, although there are some exceptions to this rule.

The farmhouse on the Mallow Farm.

We lived on the farm for several years, and today I consider myself having grown up on a farm even though we moved from it while I was still in elementary school. We moved from the farm because Mom and Dad had bought a house up on the mountain where Dad's family was from. It was originally part of the old Burns property but had been sold off back in the Depression to pay for a store bill. In those days, my Granddaddy didn’t have much but land, so much so that it is told that he sold the back side of the mountain for a horse and buggy, and he sold the land that borders the current Burns property for a bottle of whiskey! I ain’t never for the life of me figured out why he would have sold all the good land on the mountain and the valley below and kept the rockiest part of it. It could be because he couldn’t give away that part of the land, let alone sell it, but at least he kept enough land to give future generations of his family a sense of place and of their heritage. God knows, thats about all we have left! That and a bunch of cousins and relatives who will fight and quarrel over nothing more than a rock, its sad to see that the family has crumbled the way that it has over the past generation or so, it just seems that people don’t want the land but they don’t want anyone else to have it either. I suppose it all happened because Grandmaw and Granddaddy broke the old custom of leaving everything they had to the oldest boy and everyone else just had their lifetime rights to the property, instead of following that custom which had worked for the past 200 or so years, they left their estate to all of their children to be shared equally. The old custom might have been unfair, but the equal sharing way has done nothing but tear the family apart. All I know is that Grandmaw and Granddaddy done what they thought was best.

Remnants of the original Burns homeplace.

So there’s a little dirty family laundry for y’all out there reading this rambling post. Now to continue what I consider the main thread of this story, after we moved up on the mountain, on land that was now ours and ours alone, we found out just how much we missed the farm. While we did still raise hogs and chickens, we didn’t have near the land to grow our garden, raise our stock or just to get out and enjoy. We also didn’t have a big house like we did on the farm and we really had to pare down. We gave truckloads of stuff to my one Aunt who sold a lot of it in a big yard sale. We also gave away stuff to just about anyone who needed something. Probably the two things that most affected me was having to give away a lot of my toys (it took seven pick-up loads to carry all of our toys from the farmhouse, but the new house could only hold around one pick-up load). The other thing was losing our beloved dog, Pete. Pete was a farm dog, and after we moved off of the farm, he pined away for it. One day we noticed Pete was no longer with us, and the next day, the man who owned the farm brought Pete back to us and said that Pete had found his way back to the farm (about 5 miles away). Dad figured it would happen again and told the man if Pete wandered back down to the farm again, to just go ahead and keep him. A few days later, Pete went back to the farm and the man kept him. It was hard letting go of Pete but we knew that is what made Pete happy.

Aside from that, I liked living in our new home, we were located right beside of my Grandmaw Mary, whom I dearly loved, and just under the hill from my Granddaddy’s house. We also didn’t have to walk a half-mile to catch the school bus either. So while I did miss the farm in many ways, I suppose it was for the best. My family had returned home to the mountain that had borne our blood since 1699, and I suspect like the many generations of ancestors who came before, they will remain there for the duration. In the meantime, I am a farmer without a farm but the memories I have continue to sustain me even though in the back of my head I can hear Gerald O’Hara from “Gone With The Wind” repeating “Land, Katie Scarlett, Land. ‘Tis the only thing worth living for, worth fighting for, worth dying for. Land, Katie Scarlett, Land, Why it’s the only thing that matters, it’s the only thing that lasts…”

And to think this all started one early spring day all those years ago with a few old cracked-up pinto beans that weren’t fit to eat.

Anderson's Lament

For my great-great-great Grandfather Anderson.

Anderson's Lament

A man of privilege born into a good family,
He had all of the makings of greatness.
His loving Dianna and the children all looked to him as a hero
And their expectations took him to stand for the Cause.
Four years he honorably served a nation destined for failure,
And with it his livelihood.

The thinly disguised looks of pity and disgust
Cut his soul to ribbons as childhood friends
Watched him open his land to sharecropping.
Better to starve with dignity, they said,
Than to do work that is beneath you.
They didn’t realize the old society was dead.
He was determined that his children would have better,
In this new world in which he had no place.

He signed it all legal with the attorneys that morning
Knowing full well that he was not strong enough
To stand idly by as the land was sold off, piece by piece.
Land that belonged to his father, and his father before him.
None of that mattered now; it was thoughts of his sweet Dianna
That filled his mind as the rope snapped taut
And the eternal darkness washed over him.

Grandmaw Bithey

My Grandmaw “Bithey” was quite a character. Her real name was Tabitha (pronounced Ta-bie-tha), and you would have a fight on your hands if you incorrectly pronounced her name like the little girl on the TV show “Bewitched”. Grandmaw Bithey raised my mother, even though she was my mother’s grandmother. I can’t say anything nice about the woman that gave birth to my mother, so I won’t say anything other than when my mother was born, she took my mother to Grandmaw Bithey, who was doing laundry that day, and threw my mother on a pile of dirty clothes and said “If you want the little bitch to live, you’ll feed her” and then she left. So, for all intents and purposes, Grandmaw Bithey was my mother’s mother-figure. I wrote a poem about this, called “Grandmother’s Quilt”, that you can read on this blog.


Mom (front) and her cousins in Grandmaw Bithey's front yard.

I remember visiting Grandmaw Bithey when I was a kid. She had this huge basement in her house, and I was just fascinated by the shelves and shelves of canned food. The cob webs in the corners just made the whole place seem spooky. I used to love going down in the basement at Grandmaw Bithey’s, she was the only person that I knew who had a basement. Grandmaw also had a huge back porch that was closed in with screen and little windows that would open to allow access to her clothesline which was on pulleys so she wouldn’t have to leave the porch to hang out her laundry. It was a pretty neat set-up. Grandmaw also had a huge back yard that was bordered at the far end by a creek which was full of turtles, and we spent many hours down there trying to catch them.


A recent photo Grandmaw Bithey's house. It has been changed quite a bit.

Grandmaw also had cable TV. Coming from the mountain, where we only had an antenna that pulled in one channel (two when it was raining), we thought we were in heaven. I thought Grandmaw’s house was just like a vacation resort. There was just no place like it to me.

Grandmaw loved potted plants, and they were her pride and joy. She would cut a fit on you if you messed with her plants, but one time when I was little I was playing near the plants and for some reason I pulled up one of her big tree-like plants and carried it out into the kitchen. Mom and Grandmaw were sitting at the kitchen table talking when I came walking in with the plants, complete with dirt dropping off the roots. From the gasps of Mom, I could tell that I was probably in for a good lecture, but instead Grandmaw just said “Well, thank you honey, I’ve been meaning to re-pot that”, and she took it from me and put it in a pot out on her back porch. Mom told me not to bother in the plants anymore. When Grandmaw came back inside, she gave me a handful of little Oyster Crackers, a real treat for me, and told me what a good boy I was. I thought there was just nothing like those little crackers that only Grandmaw had. She always made sure that she had oyster crackers on hand when we were coming for a visit. I didn’t know until years later that you could buy oyster crackers anywhere, I just thought they were something that only Grandmaw had.


Grandmaw Bithey at Christmas, sometime in the 1960's.

Grandmaw loved to cook too, and what a cook she was. Every morning she’d make a big breakfast for us…bacon, sausage links, pancakes and King Syrup. She always had dark King syrup. If you’ve never had it, it is quite different than maple syrup. More like sorghum than maple syrup, but still really good and unique. I remember Grandmaw Bithey made the best pies in the world. Of course, she was able to get money to pay for her house by selling blackberries that she and Granddaddy Bill planted on their bottomland. Grandmaw would bake blackberry pies and sell to people, and by doing this she made enough money to pay the mortgage. People would come from all around to buy Grandmaw’s homemade pies, and she would even barter at the local store by trading her pies for whatever she needed.


Granddad Bill, Grandmaw Bithey and their granddaughter, Katie.

I remember hearing stories about how Grandmaw Bithey came to be married with Granddaddy Bill. Grandmaw Bithey’s daddy, whose name was Hugh, thought she was too young (she was 14) to get married when Granddad Bill first asked for her hand, so Grandmaw and Granddaddy decided to sneak off in the dark of night and get married. So one night, Granddaddy Bill climbed up the trellis into Grandmaw’s bedroom to carry out her suitcase and to help her climb down, and they made it out of the house but it was a dark night and as Granddaddy Bill was loading the wagon, Grandmaw Bithey tripped over the wagon tongue and broke her leg. Well, Granddad Bill had no other choice but to take Grandmaw Bithey back into the house, so he picked her up in his arms and carried her to the front door where he knocked and woke everyone up. Grandpaw Hugh called out to ask who it was, and Grandpaw Bill said, "It's Bill Iman" so Grandpaw Hugh came out of the house swearing vengeance. But finding Grandpaw Bill standing there holding Grandmaw Bithey in his arms and finding out that she had a broken leg, Grandpaw Hugh had a change of heart and told them that if they wanted to get married that bad, then they could go ahead and get married with his blessing.


Granddad Bill, Grandmaw Bithey and two of their grandchildren.

Grandmaw Bithey was also a unique person. She was very traditional in her lifestyle, she was a devout Presbyterian lady and she raised my mother that way. Grandmaw wrote only in black ink because everything else was just “silliness”. She was very prim and proper, and didn’t take to change very well. She valued education and urged her children to get all they could get, and she knew that education was the key to a better life. Her favorite song was “Hey Good Lookin’” by Hank Williams, she was a strong supporter of Equal Rights, and she raised her daughters (and my mother) to be independent women, and to think for themselves. And this was in a time and place when that just wasn’t in vogue.

Grandmaw Bithey was older than her official age. When Grandmaw Bithey passed away in 1989, the age in her obituary said 93. But she was really 106 years old (this isn’t too hard to believe either considering her mother lived to be 114). You can find Grandmaw Bithey on the 1890 census when she was the age of 7. This would have made her born in 1883, which is the year she told her family that she was born. She would have had to have been born in 1896 to only have been 93 when she passed away, and this would have made her younger than her youngest sister, and Grandmaw was the oldest child!! You may wonder how did Grandmaw manage this feat? Well, when the government people came around in the 1930’s getting information for the newly formed Social Security Administration, Grandmaw figured she’d shave a few years off of her age, after all, everyone knows that a real lady never reveals her true age. So she told them what age she wanted to be, and since she looked younger than her years, they took her at her word.

I remember sitting at Grandmaw’s kitchen table one night, and hearing her talk about all of the wonderous things that she has witnessed in her lifetime, such as the first automobile, the first airplane, women getting the right to vote, man walking on the moon, she lived through both World Wars, and watched America transition into the Industrial Revolution. I recall her saying that if she could pick a time in history that she would want to live in, it would be the time that she had lived. She said she loved seeing all of the new things happening, and if you think about it, I suppose she did see her fair share.

The Farmer's Old Wife

Recently I've been looking at folktales, rhymes and ballads from the Old Country where my people came from hundreds of years ago. "Over the Water" is the way my granny referred to the Old Country. I think I have connections to most countries of Europe: Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, France and I'm sure I'm leaving out some of them. For the most part, my people were weathly and from priminent families, but that has since went the way of the weasel in this country. I guess I descend from too many "Seventh Sons of the Seventh Son" to have inherited anything except a pride in my heritage and all of the old stories. Of course, to me, those are worth more than gold. Anyway, for some reason I've been in search of the old stories from over there, and I'm finding many variations of stories that I grew up with on a mountain in Pendleton County, WV. I'll be posting one's that I find of special interest over the next several months. I'll try not to bombard you with these stories, songs, etc, since I don't know how much you all find them of interest. If anyone out there knows of any good books of these stories, songs, ballads, etc, please let me know.

With that said, today I'm going to post an old "whistling song" from Sussex, England titled "The Farmer's Old Wife". It was called a whistling song because all the listeners were expected to whistle between every verse. I can just imagine how much joy this song must have brought to my people over the generations. I remember hearing this one growing up, although it was a slightly different version than this.

The Farmer's Old Wife.

There was an old farmer in Sussex did dwell,

[Chorus of whistlers.]

There was an old farmer in Sussex did dwell,
And he had a bad wife, as many knew well.

[Chorus of whistlers.]

Then Satan came to the old man at the plough, -
‘One of your family I must have now.

‘It is not your eldest son that I crave,
But it is your old wife, and she I will have.’

‘O, welcome! good Satan, with all my heart,
I hope you and she will never more part.’

Now Satan has got the old wife on his back,
And he lugged her along, like a pedlar’s pack.

He trudged away till they came to his hall-gate,
Says he, ‘Here! take in an old Sussex chap’s mate!’

O! then she did kick the young imps about, -
Says one to the other, ‘Let’s try turn her out.’

She spied thirteen imps all dancing in chains,
She up with her pattens, and beat out their brains.

She knocked the old Satan against the wall, -
‘Let’s try turn her out, or she’ll murder us all!’

Now he’s bundled her up on his back amain,
And to her old husband he took her again.

‘I have been a tormenter the whole of my life,
But I ne’er was tormenter till I met with your wife.’

Much Ado About Nuttin'

My cousin Bub picking up hickory nuts.

Every fall on the mountain, my family used to get together and we’d go on a nuttin’ trip. We’d gather hickory nuts, which are by far my favorite nut, and black walnuts. We knew which trees would be good bearers and we went to those trees. We sought out the nuts with the best kernals and with the thinnest hulls. Over the years, the best nut trees were left alone and the poor producers were cut for other uses. Along the way, we’d just have a pleasant afternoon and look at the land and changes on the old Burns homeplace.


The foundation of the old Burns Homeplace.

A couple of years ago, we walked all the way up the mountain to the site of the old Burns Homestead, and picked nuts all along the way, and left them in sacks to pick up on the return trip. We walked up around the mountain, and up through the Burns Family Cemetery, which is situated on top of a narrow ridge line. If you’ve ever wondered why old family cemeteries are built high on ridges and on hilltops, it all goes back to those are the area’s that proved to be marginal farmland. In the old days, especially in the mountains, you had to maximize the potential of your good flat land in order to make a living, and putting a cemetery on your best land would certainly not be the wisest decision.


The narrow ridge path leading to the homeplace.

After passing through the cemetery, and visiting the graves of loved ones, we continued on up the narrow ridge, which has a trail that meanders right on top. The land itself exudes a sense of timelessness, the trees are old and gnarled, and you can feel it in your soul that this is home. If you’ve never experienced this phenomenon, then I really can’t adequately convey it to you but suffice it to say, it is quite palpable. No wonder Appalachian people never want to leave the land, and even in death, they want to be buried on the land from which they sprung. The old Appalachian sense of place is very real, we are part of the land and the land is part of us. We are inseparable. We may leave from time to time, but the old homeplace keeps calling us back.



Homeplace Ruins.

Soon, the ridge cut out around the hill and you could see the meadow that contained the old homeplace. I believe it was the first time the younger kids had ever been to the old homeplace, and they were excited and ran ahead to “discover” the site of the house before the rest of us got there. It really was funny to me, I remembered doing this very thing when I was their age, and I’m sure my Dad did the same when he was that age too. While the remnants of the past are rapidly fading, you can still see the old foundation, and a few farm implements, like an old plow that sits in what used to be the yard. The old homeplace is situated right under the North Mountain rocks, and it is quite high up on the mountain, right at the frost line. Above the frost line, the growing season is too short to grow any crops so all throughout the fringes of Germany Valley, that land was left forested. Even to this day, you can pretty much discern the frost line by looking at where the farmland stops and the timber begins. I can’t help but think it must have been very cold living this high up on the mountain, even on that pleasant autmn day, the air had a bite to it. From the site of the old house, which is all gone except for the foundation, you have a remarkable view of Germany Valley. I can certainly see why my ancestors chose this spot to build their home.


The old plow at the homeplace.

Old family stories maintain that my Grandpaw George Burns owned the land for as far as the eye could see. They say he was rich in land but not in money, and he would sell entire sections of land dirt cheap. For example, there are tales of him selling North Mountain for a bottle of whiskey, and he sold the North Fork Flats for a wagon and a team of horses. It never fails to hearten the family to recount these old stories, and for a few moments we hold out heads up higher than usual, but then someone inevitably asks, “Why, if our family owned all of this beautiful land, did we sell all the good land off and keep the rock pile?” Everyone gets a good laugh out of it, and we again tell stories of family members who have passed away. I wonder how many generations have taken part in nuttin’ trips just like this.



Bub, Me and Mernie showing off our hickory nuts.


There’s just something about a nuttin’ trip that triggers that walk down memory lane.


Me, my aunt Six and her daughter Mernie, pose in front of a hickory tree.