Times Up On Pinchgut

The wind come a-whippin' around the corner of the house last night about midnight with such ferocity that it brought to mind the time me and Vern Cassell was coon huntin' up on Pinchgut. Pinchgut, you ask? Well Pinchgut was a holler that was so steep that the only way to get to the head of it was to go right up the crick bed or else you'll give out. It was up on the mountain from where we lived and it was so steep that nobody could ever farm anything up in there. It was almost too rough to even hunt in, and most people avoided it like the plague.

It was almost midnight, as I recall, and was gettin' down in the fall of the year and me and Vern was out coon huntin'. We'd only been out for a few minutes when we heard the dogs and knew they was on the trail of a coon. We took up the ridge after them, figgering they'd go out toward the spring and the persimmon grove. It wasn't long after being on their trail that we seen they was headin' up into Pinchgut. We knew we was in for a time right then and there, but we also knowed that if we didn't go in after the dogs that Ol' Mag, the lead hound, would stay on the trail until she dropped dead right in her tracks. They wasn't no callin' her off the trail once she was on it, either. Well, we started up into Pinchgut, making our way through the laurel thickets and acrosst downed tree's, until we got right near the head of the holler. We stopped for a minute and listened for the dogs, and wouldn't you know it, halfway up the hillside stood Ol' Mag and the rest of the dogs baying at a big oak tree. We knew they had something treed and we knew we had to try and get up there to them, or else they'd stay there until they barked themselves hoarse or something worse.

Well, me and Vern started up the hillside, grabbing onto saplings to make our way, and having to stop ever so often to catch our breath. That hill was so steep that at one point we noticed we was climbing down the hill but still having to hang onto the saplings to keep us from falling off of it. After about an hour or so, we finally come up on Ol' Mag, and she looked at us like we'd abandoned her because it took us so long to get up there to her. But all was forgiven, all the way around, when we seen what Ol' Mag had treed a big she-coon, she must have been about 50 pounds if it was an ounce, and it had its 8 twenty pound pups with it. Vern got the monkey trembles, he was so excited at the prospect of all that coon, that he lost his balance and took to falling up and down the hillside. He caught hisself about 50 yards down. He told me that I'd better go ahead and shoot 'em down since he didn't think he could make it all the way back up to the tree. So I up and shoot, and dang if that wasn't the steepest tree I'd ever seen, 'cause my shot just went up halfway and got lost, and come peppering back down on me. I tried again and the same thing happened. Then I took to studying on the situation and figgered the easiest way to get the ol' she-coon and her pups out of the tree was to cut the tree. I reckoned I'd chop down that big oak tree and send it ball hootin' down into the holler where we'd collect the coons. I had my hatchet for just the occassion, and I soon set to work gnawing at that tree like a beaver.

About halfway through chopping it down, Vern hollered up the hill at me and asked me if I heard that. I stopped and listened and heard one of the most God-Awful sounds a-comin up the ridge, sounded like Beezlebub hisself a-comin. Then we seen it, it was a white mass of wind a-tearin' out trees and stumps and lifting up leaves and swirlin' them around like you ain't never seen. Me and Vern figgered it was one of them tornadeys like we'd heard about from out west. People had been sayin' that so many people had been going west that the tornadeys was being pushed out of that country and had nowheres else to go but to come back east. Yessiree, it was one of the tornadeys and it was snow white and it was a-bearin' down on us. When that thing got to the mouth of Pinchgut, it cut up in the holler, right along the same route that me and Vern had took earlier. Well, that Ol' tornadey soon figured out that it made a big mistake because the hillsides up in Pinchgut was too steep for it to climb so it stayed right in the crickbed. It made it up to the head of the holler and then it spotted us and took to comin' at us like a banshee on the warpath.

Vern braced for it, but I took to hacking at that tree like nobody's business, and just in time I hollered "TIMBER" and watched that old oak tree fall square on top of that ol' charging tornadey. Yessirree, it killed it deader that 4 O'clock, it did. Thing of it is when that tornadey got kilt, it dropped all that dirt and all those rocks that it had been haulin' inside of it, and it filled in the whole of Pinchgut, I mean to tell you that ol' tornadey quit blowing just like somebody put a warshtub over it. By the time it got done filling up Pinchgut, poor ol' Vern was standing knee deep in prime Kansas cropland.

We was so dumbfounded by this that we had nearly forgot about the ol' she-coon and her pups, but I heard a rustlin' in the leaves and there she stood, grinnin' at me like a kid at a carnival. She knew as well as I knew that after what we had been through together, there wasn't no way neither me or Vern was gonna hurt her, so I just says to her, "Ol' Mother, you'd better get. Ain't nobody here gonna harm you." I do believe that ol' she-coon was dancin' a jig as she walked with her pups out on that new plowed dirt that we got from the dead tornadey, she only stopped to pick up a giant ear of corn, courtesy of some unknown Kansas farmer.

Now you might ask, what ever happened to Ol' Mag? Well, I was saddened to see her get buried in the aftermath of the dead tornadey, but you know what, about a week later she dug her way up out of that holler, up through all that loose dirt, and took out on the trail of that ol' she-coon. I ain't seen her since, but I reckon she's still somewhere up on the mountain trailin' that ol' coon 'cause Ol' Mag never was a dog to give up the trail.

Now that was something, I ain't never seen nothin' like it since but I reckon that wind last night come close to it. Good thing I built me a nice sturdy house out of good oak, or else I'd likely have been tryin' to hang onto the side of Pinchgut holler again instead of sittin' in here by the fire in a fine house on the best farm in Pendleton County.

Review: "Beyond The Grave" by Granny Sue

Seldom does excellence get captured on a CD. However, I recently had the extreme pleasure and delight to come across such a recording. It is titled, "Beyond The Grave: Ghost Stories and Ballads from the Mountains" by Susanna "Granny Sue" Holstein.





From start to finish, this CD held my attention and I sat on the edge of my seat waiting for what would next transpire. I wanted to coin this CD as "raw perfection", but there is nothing raw about it. It is simply perfection. The recording quality is excellent, Granny Sue's voice is excellent, and this is obviously a masterful collection of stories and ballads as told by the master.

The depth of this recording is outstanding. The gentle, soothing voice of Granny Sue immediately transported me across time and space to my granddad's house, when storytelling of this caliber was commonplace. Sadly, many of the old-timey storytellers of my youth are gone, and with them many of the stories they kept alive with each retelling. I am grateful to have found a recording that captures that mountain excellence that I had long thought was lost.

From the opening story of "Wizard Clipp" to a soulful acapella version of the Appalachian power ballad, "Pretty Polly", Granny Sue keeps listeners spellbound. As she works through "The Holly River Ghost" and on into "Sidna Davis", you become one with the stories and, I assure you, you will be hanging on every word. This wonderful CD closes with a version of "The Greenbrier Ghost", perhaps the most famous of all West Virginia ghost stories, that will draw you in so completely that you will begin to believe that Zona Shue is the girl next door.

The Appalachian Storytelling on this CD is second to none, the traditional mountain ballads are sublime. One can clearly tell after listening to this offering that Granny Sue has spent countless hours honing her craft and forging into existence a powerful recording which captures the true essence of Appalachia. I cannot say enough nice things about this masterpiece.

At the very reasonable price of $14.95 (shipping included), I urge everyone to take advantage of this exquisite work of art.

I highly recommend it to the readers of this blog, it is quite simply Appalachian Storytelling at its best.

Visit Granny Sue's Storytelling Store for ordering information, you'll be glad you did.

http://storytellingstore.blogspot.com/

Grasshoppers and Pine Resin

One of my favorite things to do when I was in college was to pass on our family stories to my little cousins. Since I grew up with their parents they were more like nieces and nephews to me, so I felt it my obligation to spoil them.

I used to tell them (and still do) stories about how life used to be. Over the years, we have them convinced that my mother is an old woman nearing 100 years of age, when in fact she is but in her early 50’s. When we are all around her, my brother and I tell them that she ain’t been the same since that time she fell off of the train bridge. I can see in their eyes that they are picturing her falling off a train bridge back in the early 1900’s!! They just look at my mom with pity in their eyes, and say “Poor ole thing” and try to do things for her since she is so old. As a matter of fact, years ago my brother and I even gave our mother a new name to go along with her newly created elderly personality…Maude. All of the children just love Maude because she is like a kind old grandmother to them all, and they truly believe she holds the wisdom of the ages. The thing the kids don’t realize about Maude is that if she doesn’t know it, she will make it up!

Dad and "Maude".

I remember a few years ago, my little cousins were out “exploring” the Burns property. While it may have been a new experience for them, this was the very same land that my brother and I had explored a generation before, and our Dad before us, and his daddy before him, probably on back to when my family first settled here in the 1700’s. Well, during their great exploration, the kids came upon an old “fort” that my brother and I had built about decade earlier; we had made it out of tree limbs and carried rocks in for a floor and everything. By our standards, we had it lookin’ good. We even had an old cast iron stove up there that was a cast off from our house. The kids thought they had come upon El Dorado or something, because when they ran home to tell about it, their eyes were wide with excitement and they were rattling away like a bell clapper to a goose’s ass. After they described the place, I told them, “Yeah, I know where that is. Maude, did you hear that, they found my old house.” Their eyes immediately lit up and asked me how was it my house. I went on the tell them that when I was about 15 years old, I wanted some privacy so I built me a little lean-to up on the mountain and stayed there for about 2 years. Since they were kids, they didn’t put together that two years on the mountain in a lean-to would have been torture, or that I would have still been a teenager.

They were putty in my hands, so I elaborated on my story. I told them that the old stove up there was what I used for heat and to cook on. I remembered there were some empty cans up there from where my brother and I used to pack our lunch for our all day excursions, so I told them that the cans were from the food I ate. One of them questioningly asked me, “But there weren’t enough cans for you to have ate up there all winter”. I retorted, “No, there sure wasn’t was there, if you go up to the old pine tree, you will see that it is oozing sap in several places, that’s where I tapped it for pine resin. When I ran out of food, I lived on grasshoppers and pine resin!” I further explained to them that grasshoppers and pine resin really sticks to your ribs, and that grasshoppers are easy to dry and store all winter long. Well, they were eating this story all up, and insisted I go up to the old fort with them, so they could ask me questions about it. I went with them, and they tried their best to trip me up in a lie, but one by one I could see each of them start to believe me. I showed them the old pine tree with the resin running down the sides of it. Each one of them had to sample the pine resin, and they all said it tasted terrible and asked me how I could eat such stuff. I told them, “You’d be surprised what you’ll eat when you get hungry, and besides, you develop a taste for it.” I couldn’t, however, manage to get them to sample a grasshopper!

My little cousins Mernie and Bub.

I had an answer for everything they could think to ask. For example, there was an old stone box that my brother had built out of flat rocks, and when they found it they asked me what that was for, I said that I had kept live rattlesnakes in it so I’d have fresh meat in the winter months, and that once it got cold, the snakes were real sluggish so you didn’t have to worry about them crawling away. To further add to my fabricated tale, I exclaimed astonishment when I looked over at some nearby huckleberry bushes that were growing, “Wow, look at those bushes, they really have grown since I lived here.” I told them I transplanted those pushes from further up on the mountain so I’d have huckleberries to pick.

My little cousins Mernie and Clyde.

Then, one of the kids found some wild turkey feathers in the leaves that were windblown up against the walls of the stick fort. They didn’t realize that’s where me and Jason had cleaned off the leaf litter, and that wild turkeys would come in there to eat the acorns that had fallen on the bare ground. They undoubtedly would have left some feathers here and there. But, you can see where I’m going with this, I told them that those must be the feathers from that turkey that I had killed with my throwing stick! They asked me what a throwing stick was, and I said it is a smooth stick that could be thrown with so much force that it could kill a bird or even rabbits and such. Of course, they wanted me to show them and they went and found me a smooth stick. I made a big show of it, telling them they had to hold the stick at just the right angle and throw it with just enough force…and they would have to take into account the direction the wind was blowing that day. With great showmanship, I then drew back my arm and threw the throwing stick, and it went flying awkwardly through the air until it cumbersomely hit a large rock. Just as it hit the rock, a rabbit dodged out from behind it. I exclaimed, “Well, I almost got us a rabbit for supper, that darn rock got in the way.” They really thought I was something then, they hadn’t even seen that rabbit sitting there, and since I apparently had, that was all the proof they needed to believe in my extensive wilderness survival skills!

When we got home, my cousin Brittany asked Maude why she had let me live up there for so long when I had a home right here that had real food in it, and to this Maude replied, “Well, it was a different time then and boys had to learn how to survive in those days!”

And people wonder why the kids are so spoiled!!

Murdered I Say

The above is the tombstone of my 3-great-Uncle George Bible Bennett. He was actually my uncle two different ways since two of his sisters (Sarah & Hannah) were my grandmothers. He was also married to my 3-great aunt, Hannah Cassel, on another side. Oddly enough, Hannah was the sister to my 3-great grandfather, Cullom Cassel, and also to my 3-great grandmother, Elizabeth (Cassel) Nelson. In Pendleton County you will find that all of the older families will have multiple connections.

The interesting story about George Bible Bennett (1831-1864), is that his tombstone reads:

"Here lies GBB

Killed by the Swamps

Murdered I Say"

Now...I'll bet you are wondering why the use of the word murder? You see, my uncle George was killed by the Yankee's during the War, and in Pendleton County, one of the prominent Yankee units were called the "Swamp Dragons". They were known to raid, pillage and steal from any families who supported the Confederacy. Being a member of the Swamp Dragons also gave an excuse for many men to avenge alleged wrongs done to their families in years past. To me, the Swamps were nothing more than a vigilante group that was authorized by the Yankee government.

Many families in Pendleton had strong Confederate sympathies, and the Bennett family had more than most. In fact, George's first cousin, Joseph McCally Bennett was the Auditor for the State of Virginia during the War and appears on Confederate Virginia money. Below you will see a $5 note that bears his photo and signature.

Regardless of the circumstances, uncle George was killed in 1864 by the Yankee Swamp Dragons. He didn't take up arms against them, he was merely eating at his father's house when they approached. Knowing there would be trouble, he jumped out of the kitchen window and tried to run through the field to get away. The Yankee captain spotted him and chased him down on horseback, and according to family stories, wounded him by shooting him in the leg. While George was down the Yankee captain rode up to him, got off of his horse and shot George in the head with his pistol. Of course, the family was outraged over the murder of one of their own, and my grandfather Elijah Bennett (George's father) said that he was going to make a tombstone that would forever let everyone know about the dirt and cowardice of the Yankee army! To that end, I don't know if the tombstone inscription carries the same meaning today as it did in the years following the War, but certainly remains eye-catching and makes the reader want to know more about the events that transpired and led to the death of his George. Maybe Grandpaw Elijah did accomplish his goal.

Another version of the killing of George Bible Bennett is recounted in the book, "Twixt the North and South" by H.M. Calhoun. An excerpt of the story:

"...a portion of Boggs' company of home guards and perhaps a portion of Snyder's company, including Captain Snyder, himself, raided the home of Elijah Bennett in the Bland Hills....George Bennett jumped out of a window and ran. He had gotten several hundred yards away from the house and would have succeeded in making his escape but ran into another squad of the home guards. They fired upon him and wounded him. He threw up his hands and surrendered. Captain Snyder afterward told persons that he tried to prevent the cruel mutilation of Bennett that followed but was unable to do so.

Elijah Bennett, the aged father of George Bennett, procured a large mountain stone and cut the following inscription in crude letters thereon: "Here lies George Bible Bennett. Killed by the Swamp Dragons. Murdered I say."

This stone he placed at the head of his son's grave where it remains to this day."

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You can begin see how the events that happened nearly 150 years ago continue to be kept alive through storytelling in rural area's. I know my life has been enriched by the closeness I feel with my ancestors who came before me. To me they are more than names and dates, and that is the way it should be.