Beth Durham's Blog, page 22

Subdivisions in 1900

If you’ve been visiting TennesseeMountainStories.com for very long, you know I’m fascinated by old architecture.  Back in 2015 I shared a whole series are articles about historic homes here.  Well you can imagine how my ears perked up when some friends mentioned a new house they’ve bought in Dayton, Tennessee.  It was built in 1900.  As I looked at the pictures and tried not to covet them actually living IN an antique, I commented this must have been an old farmhouse.  “Does it still have an...

Canned Sausage

I received a wonderful gift a few weeks ago and I’ve been meaning to tell y’uns about it.

Brother George met my husband in the parking lot at church one Sunday morning and handed him a quart jar.  “What’s that? He asked” 

George just grinned and said, “Beth’ll know.”

Well I did!  It was canned sausage and I had not had any since my grandpa Stepp last killed a hog – and I can’t even count how many years that’s been since he’s been home in heaven for the past 30 years.  I well remember Grandma c...

The Dainty Lady's Hanky

If I can find a subject to write on that allows me to open with a quote from Gone with the Wind it always seems like a winner. Well, here goes…

Rhett Butler says to Scarlett as he tries to tell her he’s leaving, “Here take my handkerchief.  Never, at any crisis of your life, have I known you to have a handkerchief.”

Not long ago at all, men always had a handkerchief to lend to a weeping lady.   But a lady had one too – Scarlett O’Hara being the exception to lots of these rules.  In Victorian d...

Aprons - fashion and utility

It wasn’t too many years ago that every woman doing any kind of domestic work wore an apron.  Clothes were scarce, laundry difficult and household chores were often quite messy.  Aprons were such a practical part of femininity that grandma’s apron was just a part of her – no one questioned it.  They wore them until they were threadbare, adding patches to places that gave way to a burn or constant rubbing – whether on tables or the wash board.  And they were beautiful.  Aprons were made from...

Two Fellers Under One Sled

This article will bring us to the end of Callie Melton’s book “Pon my Honor”.  I hope you’ve enjoyed them as much as I have. 

Old man Johnson had a boy named Henery that was a might funny.  He was a big raw-boned and slow-footed boy.  And to make matters worse, when he got to the age for his voice to change it started and then stopped smack dab in the middle of the process.  So Henery always talked two ways.  He’d start out in a fine little boy’s voice, then he’d wind up in a big coarse man...

The Preacher and the Old Woman that was a-livin’ in the Dark

Callie Melton includes in “Pon My Honor” a section she calls ‘One for the Road’ and this story falls into that section.

Up here there’s always a whole passel of jokes and tales going around about preachers.  But they are always good-natured jokes and tales, for we are very careful to tell them on our own denomination.  This is done for two mighty good reasons.  First, we just don’t joke with anybody or about anything that we don’t think a right smart of.  Then, too, we all hold mighty strong w...

The Boy and The Big White Haint

 

Well I’ve kind of gotten on a roll with the ghost stories – and I think this is one you’ll really appreciate since it’s a good reminder how we can let our imagination, or our fear, get the best of us.

From Callie Melton’s “Pon My Honor”:

Another favorite haint tale Grandpa told us was the one about the time Old Man Phillips sent one of his boys to the cotton gin.

When Grandpa and Grandma lived in the little settlement called Stockton’s Valley, everybody raised a cotton patch …not only for makin...

When God and The Devil Divided up the Dead

 

In ‘Pon my Honor, Carrie Melton attributes this story to the Knoxville News-Sentinel but gives no further citation.  I tried to search their website for it without success.

As I said in last week’s post I’m not prone to telling stories of haints but your response to The Logston Tide was overwhelming so I thought I’d share another of Mrs. Melton’s stories from the section “I Wouldn’t A-Believed Hit if I Hadn’t Seen Hit Myself”

Once there was this here old man who was all crippled up with rheuma...

The Logston Tide

The mountain is replete with stories of haints and ghosts.  Despite very deep Christian faith we tend to be a superstitious people.  Now this is something I don’t want to perpetuate so you won’t usually find ghost stories among my Tennessee Mountain Stories.  However, Callie Melton has included several in “Pon My Honor” and I want to share this particular one because of the history I found behind it. Here you can read a series of old newspaper clippings that detail the crime and trial of youn...

Caroline and the Yankees

This story out of Callie Myers Meltons’ “Pon my Honor” originated with the Nashville Tennessean although neither date nor issue is given.

My Great-grandma, Caroline Young Parson, had been left a widow in 1860 for her old man, Great-grandpa John C. Parsons had died of typhoid fever when the four children was just young’uns  With four young’uns and no pa or brothers to help her, Caroline, like all the women of her time and place, had to stand on her own two feet.  Living alone in such perilous t...