Louise Hill

Partial Transcript: I’m a native of North Carolina and have been all my life. And most of my life, I’ve been interested in wildflowers. It’s one of my mother’s hobbies that started when I was about five years old. She’d take to me to the woods and tell me all the names of flowers, and we’d spend hours just roaming through the woods. And I’ve learned a lot of the names by experience. And one of the ones that I’ve learned is the bloodroot.

Partial Transcript: My name is Louise Hill. And I’ve always been interested in wildflowers. I’m from the mountains of Hendersonville and around. And as a child, I learned most of mine from nature, not books. My mother would always take me to the woods. We’d roam through it, and she’d show me these names and tell me names. A lot of them were book names, but mostly she did it by her memory, and a lot of the names she would probably make up. I don’t know. But anyway, we enjoyed it.

And I guess one of the first ones I learned was the bloodroot. It is a beautiful flower. It blooms first in the spring. It blooms first, gets its bloom, and then its leaves come. Has a beautiful white flower with a yellow center, kind of like a daisy. And it’s used as a tonic, a blood-builder.

And then another—

Partial Transcript: My mother and grandmother—her mother—always loved flowers. And she always worked hard in her flower garden.
But it wasn’t the wildflowers that she was much interested, ‘cause she was kind of crippled and couldn’t get around. But she loved it anyway. And so she more or less dealt with the tame flowers.

Partial Transcript: Right, right. And we always was careful about snakes. Because most of the time when your wildflowers are out, the snakes are out. And we never did have any kind of a catastrophe with snakes until my husband, about—oh, he was close to 80, and a copperhead bit him. So we just enjoy our walk and analyze the flowers.

And then about the second flower to come out in the spring is the trillium, Toadshade trillium. Its leaves are kind of like the toad frog, so that’s how it got its name. And it’s in bloom for about six, I guess six weeks. And then I have other kinds of trillium that come along. I have the Vasey, the—I don’t remember right now what all they were.

Partial Transcript: Then the pink lady slipper is next in bloom. Right in behind it is your yellow lady slipper, the most beautiful—one of the most beautiful wildflowers in Hendersonville, or round in the mountains, Smoky Mountains, this part.

Interviewer
What makes them special?

Louise Hill
Well, they’re just pretty. They have their tassels that comes down, looks like a shoestring. And then the flower itself looks like a shoe. Your pink one is more open and a bigger flower than the yellow.

And then after that is little bluets, and they’re more or less on the water streams or a damp area. They’re a small, little blue flower.

Then I have a wild violet that is polka dot. Most of them are either a stripe or white or yellow, blue or lavender.

Partial Transcript: And then later on in the summer, we have the mushroom. And it’s edible.
Interviewer
And where do you find that mushroom? Is there any particular—?

Louise Hill
Yes, it has to be a kind of a damp. And it’s in—well, not in—in some mosses. And it’s usually always found around buckeyes trees or certain type trees.

Interviewer
Does it have any health benefits?

Louise Hill
Well, I don’t know.
Interviewer
Tasty? Is it tasty?
Louise Hill
I don’t know about that. I guess it d—other than eating.
Interviewer
Is it tasty?

Louise Hill
It is.

What’s your favorite recipe with it?
Louise Hill
Well, it’s good on steak or, oh, hamburger. It’s made into a sauce, kind of.
Then I have another mushroom type is the Indian pipes. But now, as far as eating them, I don’t know of any—other than there’s just being pretty. And they’re parasites. They only grow in certain areas.

Interviewer
So that’s just ornamental, but you don’t eat that.

Louise Hill
Right. You don’t eat it.

Partial Transcript: And the showy orchid is a very popular little flower.

Speaker
Think there’s a crested iris that goes along with them.

Louise Hill
Yes. A little—there’s a little miniature iris that’s wild. It’s called the crested iris. It blooms a little later than—but first of May I would say, that it—showy orchid and it—blooms.
Then we have fire pinks. It’s a red star-like flower and it blooms a little later in the spring.
And of course most all of your wildflowers like a damp area. The foamflower, it likes it on a creek kind of a swampy area. And of course the Jack-in-the-pulpit is one of the most beautiful wildflowers, I think, of any.
Interviewer
Where do you find that?
Louise Hill
It’s in usually a damper area. Damper, rich soil. And there’s two kinds of those, two colors. There’s the dark brown and the green.
Interviewer
Does it have any health benefits or eating—
Louise Hill
Not that I know of, but—in the fall then they have berries and they’re real red, kind of like your ginseng.

Partial Transcript: And the ginseng, it blooms early and it’s not too showy. But in September the berries turn red like your Jack-in-the-pulpit, and the leaves die and it’s easily spotted. And it’s good as a blood-builder. Ginsana is made out of it.
And in the fall of the year you have Lycopodium, and there’s two types of it. One is like a little tree, and it’s called princess pine. Then you have the club moss, which is sort of like moss, and yet it’s different, too. And then you have the—oh—there’s another kind, but I can’t think of it.
Speaker
Turkey—
Louise Hill
Turkey paw. It’s named turkey paw. But all three are under Lycopodium.

Partial Transcript: Oh, yeah. Several different types of fern. You have the Christmas fern that stays green all year. Then you have the lady’s fern that either has a dark stem or a light green stem. Then you have—
Speaker
Cinnamon.
Louise Hill
Cinnamon fern that grows tall, and its reproduction is—looks like a big ball of cinnamon. And it gets very large.
And then the— Can’t think of it. We’ll just skip over it.
Speaker
Resurrection.
Louise Hill
Yeah, the little resurrection is small. But if it’s not got adequate water, it’ll die down. Then when it does get water, it’ll revive it. And that’s how it gets its name as resurrection.
The royal fern is kind of like your cinnamon fern. It has a cinnamon-looking ball as its reproduction.
Can’t think of anything else.

Partial Transcript: Well, really I don’t know a whole lot about it. Now, my mother could tell you more about it. I just never did learn. I guess we depended more on the doctors as the years went by than we did old remedies. But I do know that jewelweed—which is a wildflower also. It looks like a monkey face. And you can mix jewelweed and another weed—ragweed or some of the other—like for a sting or poison oak, and rub it, and it’ll stop the itch, and as well as clear it.

Partial Transcript: No, my grandfather was a doctor. And he knew how all these remedies came about. And I guess that’s one reason I never did learn too good.
And another thing my grandmother taught me—and it’s not too nice in a way, but it was how—what older people had to do to live. Jerusalem oak is a weed. But they used the seeds of Jerusalem oak and molasses, mixed it together for worms. And back then there was a lot of children, and a lot of them slept together. And they contacted the germ of the worm, or either a tapeworm. And I can remember when some of the children would get it, and the tapeworm would just knot up in your stomach. Well, that’s when she’d get the Jerusalem oak and molasses and mix it up, and you ate a tablespoon of that. And most of the time, it killed the worms.
Interviewer
Did that work pretty well?
Louise Hill
It did. It don’t sound too good, but—Anyway, it was one remedy.

Partial Transcript: And another thing for side pleurisy or colds, chest colds—you stewed an onion, fixed you a poultice of that, and kept your chest heated with that. I guess the heat’s what did it, but anyway, that was another remedy that they used.

Partial Transcript: Well, most of the time. But he had it with him. And if he didn’t, if it was prevalent and easy to get, he’d just have them there. And he worked with a lot of animals as well as humans. But most of the time, it’d be something he’d recommend doing or what kind of a herb.
And another herb that we used to—oh—dig as children is fairy’s wand. And we would dry it, and it was made into a tonic. And I think older people used to call it grub root. And it was kinda like ginseng.
Interviewer
Did it help with—what kind of things?
Louise Hill
As a tonic, low blood. But I don’t know just exactly how you mix it or anything.
Interviewer
So a lot of these remedies, you didn’t buy in the store.
Louise Hill
Oh, no. And a lot of it was made up and sold in the store, of local remedies.
Interviewer
Do you remember which stores would sell those kinds of things?
Louise Hill
Well, I think now the only place that sells it’s Boone, North Carolina.
Interviewer
What about when you were growing up?
Louise Hill
Well, there was two or three in Hendersonville when I grew up.
Speaker
The names of the stores.
Interviewer
Do you remember the names at all?
Speaker
Give him the names of a few of them.
Louise Hill
Uh—Depot—something Depot, but I can’t remember.



Louise Hill
Mm-hm. That’s the—we always called it grub root when we dug them in the fall and winter. But when they’re green and in bloom, they’re fairy’s wand. Makes a—some of them called them cat tails, too. They’re a big, long, white flower.

Partial Transcript: But I can remember Daddy saying, “You go with me today. You can dig with me. I like to work with you.” And we’d take us some kind of a little big and dig them. Then we’d have to come back home with them and wash them, get all the dirt, grit, and all of that out. And then we’d have to put them out and dry them, and about a week it’d have to dry. And then we was ready to take them to the market.
Mm-hm. That’s the—we always called it grub root when we dug them in the fall and winter. But when they’re green and in bloom, they’re fairy’s wand. Makes a—some of them called them cat tails, too. They’re a big, long, white flower.

Partial Transcript: In the deep woods. Hills and—hillsides.
Interviewer
Do you have any favorite haunts that you love to find these things in?
Louise Hill
Well, we just knew where to go. I mean, that was just—actually, it was everybody’s woods and all. It was—they didn’t care for you—in other words, they didn’t count it poaching. They just—everybody did it, and a lot of times we’d get together to do that. But it’s not like that now. People are kinda stranger, I guess, or getting gone.
Speaker
Private property.
Louise Hill
Yeah.
Interviewer
So these days, you know, when things—it’s a very different time. Do you just walk in the woods?
Louise Hill
Yeah. And you better not get anything off of anybody that’s not giving you permission. Now, you can walk and look and enjoy, but leave it alone.

Partial Transcript: Off and on, 60, 65 years.

Interviewer
What got you started?
Louise Hill
Mom and Dad. Old tradition.
Interviewer
What did they sell at the market?
Louise Hill
They had vegetables, eggs, honey. About anything. Old-timers—
Speaker
Raspberries.
Louise Hill
Yeah, raspberries was his—he had a big raspberry farm, and he used to hire about 35 pickers in the summer. So he stayed pretty busy with those. And my busy time was setting them out. I was the best one, he said, to—
Interviewer
So you were the—
Louise Hill
We’d plant them.
Interviewer
You were the display person.
And once you took it over yourself, what are the kinds of things that you sell?
Louise Hill
Eggs, veggies, wildflowers.
Interviewer
What’s your favorite thing about going to the Curb Market three times a week?

Louise Hill
Keeps you busy. You don’t have time to breathe too much.

Partial Transcript: Yeah, but I love to please my customers, and I love to associate with them.
Interviewer
Do you give advice to customers who might ask, “Well, I have this bad cold or this cough,” and—
Louise Hill
Well, not so much as I do with the wildflowers and with children. Now, I love to take time to explain to them nature a little bit as I go along. And I enjoy that.
Speaker
Kinda transplanting—

Partial Transcript: If my great-grandson finds a snakeskin or anything, I try to tell him what it is. And if it’s the whole snakeskin, it’s non-poisonous. If you don’t find the snakeskin or one scale at a time, it’s poisonous snakes. The poisonous snakes shed it a scale at a time, like I said, and you won’t find it. And they also have their young. And the non-poisonous snakes lay egg. And I—

Partial Transcript: Well, in some ways it’s a lot better to do them the way they did than the modern way. I think. Of course, I might just be old-timey, but— And in some ways, the modern way’s the best. But all around, older people could get things done in the daylight hours. We can’t even keep up. Now what difference does that make? You know? All the modern ways. Women used to never have washing machines, anything of that type. They always kept the work up. We get more modern and more work. Does that make sense?
Well, I think a lot of times when you get to evaluating your time, how did they ever do? They had time to can. They had time to freeze. They had time to dry things. And how did they ever get it done in just the daylight hours, when we had no electricity? But—

Partial Transcript: Well, I guess just being a tomboy. It’s what I was always classified as. I was always climbing the trees, and the limbs breaking, and me falling out. But I just enjoyed finding an old grapevine in the woods, somewhere firmly attached to a tree or something. Make me a swing, swing from one hillside to the other.

Partial Transcript: Louise Hill
They’re just—they’re just—
Speaker
Nature itself.
Louise Hill
Nature itself is cheated out. They cheated their self of a good life.
Speaker
Cheap entertainment.
Louise Hill
On Sunday evenings—that’s back on the day we had, that we could do what we wanted to. Six or eight or ten, maybe more, all get together and to go to our, like I said, our grapevine. And swing from one—say 40 feet or so, from one hill to the other. And we had more fun that way, I know, than you would sitting and watching TV. ‘Cause once you see anything, most of the time, that’s it. But I guess once you got spoiled of swinging on the grapevine, I—that was enjoyment too.

Partial Transcript: Right. There’d be at least a dozen children get together. And we didn’t argue and bicker over who was gonna be next or whatever. We just lined up and took our turn, and everybody got along. Nowadays, seem like children have so much, if it comes their turn, everyone’s turn is somebody else’s too. Maybe I’m critical about it, but children don’t play like they used to.

Partial Transcript: Well, I’ve tried to be a neighbor and I’ve tried to—what little knowledge I do have, I try to share it.
Speaker
You enjoyed your wildflowers and your—
Louise Hill
Oh, yeah.
Speaker
Curb Market, and your visit with friends, and sharing memories of things. She shares some with family, too.

Partial Transcript: Well, not too much. Now most of the time, I just went with my mother. Daddy was always busy, like we said, with the raspberries. And he took a load to Greenville every morning at 4:00. Then he’d come back, load up, go to Asheville and take a load. And he was usually pretty well busy with things like that.
Interviewer
How did he get there?
Louise Hill
By truck.
Interviewer
Via truck.Louise Hill
Mm-hm. When the Curb Market first started, he went mule and wagon.
But one of the funniest stories, I guess—or in a way it was funny, in a way it wasn’t too fun until I found out I wasn’t broken boned. We had this little dogwood tree. And of course, I was a little hellion, some of the others and—all of us wanted to take our turns climbing the dogwood tree. And it was getting about to the latter part of us, too—and I got up in the—done my climbing and got up, got situated, and got nearly to the top, and the limb broke. So I tumbled out of the tree, onto the hillside, and about 50 foot down the hill. And me hurting so bad. Well, the boys, they felt sorry for me. They made a pack saddle up—you know what I’m talking about? And you sit on that. They hauled me to the house on that pack saddle. And after I found out I wasn’t seriously injured. It knocked the breath out of me. Then we had a big laugh about it. And Mom said to me, she said, “Louise, I guess you’ll learn, you can’t be a tomboy.”
Interviewer
Did that stop you from being a tomboy?
Louise Hill
No. I climbed right on. Didn’t break my neck, so I decided, well, didn’t kill me that time, I’ll go again.

Partial Transcript: Always loved to be my dad’s partner. And he always said he liked to be mine. So we was going huckleberry picking—blueberries, whatever. And it’s what—now the cradle of—no.
Speaker
The graveyard field?
Louise Hill
No. It was where Mandy goes and rides horses.
Speaker
Oh, DuPont.
Louise Hill
DuPont. Anyway, we’d went up and was gonna have a picnic. And it come up, this thunderhead. And we rushed around and we spied the fence to it. And Dad said, “Get untied, get unhooked from that and don’t get out in the open.” ‘Cause lightning struck there, pretty much.
But anyway, the rain cleared out, we got our meal. So we started to pick our blueberries. And oh, they was just hanging. Big, old, tall bushes.
Directly, I heard this noise. And I’d never heard a rattlesnake. And I didn’t know what in the world was going on. And finally—wasn’t very long—here come my dad, just turning. He says, “Louise, get on my shoulder and don’t move.”
Well, what had happened, we got in a den of them. And there was so many a-singing that we couldn’t tell which direction they was coming from, and so many of them.
So Dad put me on his shoulder and took his—I held his blueberries and mine too. And he carried me on his shoulder out of that snake den. There’s no telling how many snakes was in it. ‘Cause like I said, you couldn’t tell which dire—so before we got completely back to the truck, we met two more guys that one had three of them and another had two. Big ones.
So Dad said, “We’ll never go back there to pick any more blueberries. That’s it.”
And then another time me and my husband was hiking. And the old roadway had kinda grew up. And he said, “Let me lead the way.” He said, “I can hear and see better at that time.” He said—well, he changed this route of the road, which—and he hadn’t got more and changed much, till I heard this rattlesnake rattling. And I said to him, I said, “Look out, look out.” And just about that far from the road, there was two. A big yellow-bodied. And it was pretty, if you ever seen a pretty snake. And then we had the brown color. It wasn’t as pretty to me as the yellow and black, but—
He finally got them. One went in a cedar, just a little hole. And it—the hole was smaller than the snake. How it ever got in it, I don’t know. But anyway, it was amazing. But he had the biggest snake, made belts with. Covered the belts. He had one for him, one for my son—and his belt was 42 inches—and my grandson, and myself, out of the one snake.
Interviewer
What kind of snake was it?
Louise Hill
Rattlesnake.
Interviewer
Timber rattlesnake?
Louise Hill
Mm-hm. (affirmative)

Partial Transcript: Well, they would enjoy if they would get out under—in other words, it would educate them as these things came along.
I guess I’ll have to tell you about my son. I won’t call any names, but anyway. He worked at Kimberly-Clark. And he used to, every fall when deer season opened out west, he’d take a week, ten days, and go out hunting. So he couldn’t hardly ever get his vacation ‘cause everybody wanted it the same time. So he quit trying to.
So guys asked him, said, “Why do you not ever want to go hunting anymore?”
And he said, “Well, for one thing, when I put in for a vacation I can’t get it. And for another thing, my Mom’s taught me something better than any kind of big hunting.”
He said, “When you go deer hunting, it’s so cold out there that you freeze to death.”
And said, “When she gets out, it’s warm and you can enjoy it.”
And said, “I’ve learned the different types of flowers, and I’m learning more.”
And said, “I get more enjoyment out of flowers than I do big game. At least I don’t get cold.”