Ruth Houston

Partial Transcript: I was born in Avery county, March 9, 1914.

00:10

Interviewer

00:21

If you can.

00:23

Interviewer

01:15

Oh, it’s whistling.

01:17

Interviewer

01:20

Well, then, uh … What I said, was that okay?

01:24

Interviewer

01:27

Okay.

01:30

Interviewer

01:34

I was born in Avery County, March 9, 1914.

01:41

Interviewer

01:54

I was an only child, so my father and mother made sure that I had everything I needed even though it was hard times all around us.

Partial Transcript: They met in a mica shop called the Tarheel Mica Company and they were married at their boss’s home one year before I was born. I was their anniversary present.

Partial Transcript: Oh. My favorite food when I was a child was always my mama’s fried chicken with gravy and biscuits and applesauce. We had a small farm so we had our own chickens and cows. There was always plenty of food and my mother made sure that her child and her husband were well fed.

Partial Transcript: Our garden? We had a large garden in the corner closest to our house. My mama would plant her lettuce there. She would plant it early in the spring and cover it with some kind of cheese cloth or whatever kind of cloth she had so that if the snow or the cold wind blowed, the lettuce would not get killed. She also grew onions large as saucers because she loved her garden and at the edge of where the fence was, she kept her rhubarb and her, um, other greens. Always in the spring of the year, we had early mustard greens because in the fall, my mama would let the seeds spread all over the garden. She would leave a plant here and there all over her garden so we would have before plowing time to replant. We’d always have bushels of green mustard, which I love any kind of greens, and I enjoyed my mama’s lettuce salad with the onions in the early spring.

We grew tomatoes, we grew lots of beans and lots of potatoes and lots of corn and, as I got old enough to help with our garden, I had a lot of the hoeing to do. The was no other children to help me, so I would hoe the potatoes and hoe the corn and beans and help with all the work until I was ten years old, when my sister was born and my mother’s health from then on was not very good. I had to learn to cook and tend. I had to learn to milk the cows, gather the eggs, feed the chickens, and do the laundry. In other words, I had to grow up early. I really didn’t know I was still a child at ten because I had to do the work that my mama should be doing and she was too ill to do.

My father’s mother had always lived with us, so I had my grandmother and my baby sister to take care of plus doing all the things that my mother should be doing.

Partial Transcript: Oh, for fun? We had, um, what we called taffy parties. The children in the neighborhood would, um, dress up in odd outfits and we would get together. We also had candy pullings, which we made candy from molasses or sugar. We made the taffy from sugar and we would get out in the yard, boys and girls together, and pull this candy until it was ready to put on a buttered platter and cut into pieces so we could enjoy it.

08:59

After I started to school, I was, um … My first school was in the church, and we didn’t have a school building. We had the church house and we went to school. We had, uh, what we call pie suppers and box suppers. The girls would make pies and, uh, take to the pie suppers and the young men would bid against each other until somebody got a pie and the pie that they got, they got to eat and enjoy with the girl that had made the pie.
I had that we call an egg custard pie one night in the church and the guys were biding to get my pie. The guy that got it and we sat down to eat, he said, “How in the world did you get this beautiful inch high, or inch and a half high, meringue on top of this egg custard?” I said, “Well, my mama helped, and it takes very little sugar if the eggs are beaten. If you put a lot of sugar, it gets syrupy and spreads and doesn’t stand up on the pie.” So he had a wonderful mama, and she was a good cook. But he said, “My mama’s pies never turn out like this. I’ll have to tell her that she said she puts too much sugar.”

And in the box suppers, we would, um, have potato salad and greens and cornbread and ham biscuits and all sorts of good things in our box supper boxes. We also had cakewalks and the cake would go to the ugliest man or the prettiest girl, so we did have fun even though it was fun that we had to not have too much money involved.

Partial Transcript: Interviewer

What church?

Interviewer

It was Baptist.
Interviewer


We didn’t have any singing in our school.


Interviewer


Oh, church. Oh, we didn’t have any instruments but we did have fun singing.
Interviewer


Just the entire room, the congregation singing.

Interviewer

During Christmas holidays or before Christmas, we had, uh, extra songs and Christmas songs.

Partial Transcript: Oh, the dances? The only dances were the ones that, um, Plumtree that they had on the weekends. We didn’t have any dancing in our school or church.


Interviewer


Oh, about Plumtree? Oh. People who had the parties? There was, um, maybe a half dozen families lived in and around Plumtree. One that started the mica business, he first had three houses he built down on the river and, um, ground the mica into fine powder. And then, through some people in New York, he learned that mica could be made into different things, and the people did a lot of mining. So it was the Tarheel, one man owned the Tarheel Mica Company and the mica mills on the dams on the river.

Partial Transcript: They made, um, lamp shades for the early lamps and, uh, it was called isinglass instead of mica at that time. And, uh, they made, uh, any kind of stoves, the cook stoves or the eating stoves. They had little windows in the doors of these stoves and they were made of this mica. And later when toasters came out, our first toasters, they probably have toasters today have insulation. But then we use mica altogether for insulating.

17:11

So it was one brother who started this mica business. Another of his brothers started a grocery store and a dry goods store and, um, some of his family married into the … These were Vances and some of the Vance girls married into the Burleson families, so there was at least six families who would always be into this party and dancing and enjoying sales. They would gather at the home of the one that owned the grocery store and the dry goods store because he built his large house out in the middle of a large field It was flat and they could party in the house, on the porch, and out in the flat yard.

So that’s where my husband, Jay Myron, played for the dances and he loved playing. He never had a music lesson in his life, but any tune that he heard he could follow and play it, and back in those days, you only played the guitar. Another ogre man played the violin, which was called the fiddle back then, and another one would pick the banjo and they had lots of fun playing tunes like “Turkey in the Straw.” And the people loved to dance and they danced every Saturday night and then they would pass around the hat and take a collection to pay the musicians.
Which of course, in those days, they could not have a party unless they had lots to drink, just like a party today has all kinds of drinks. But back then they had peach brandy or apple brandy or corn whiskey, which was later called white lightning. It was strong stuff, all of it, and these parties would use a washing tub, a round, tin washing tub to pour their green tea in. And they would hang cups or glasses or whatever all around, guess it was mostly tin cups back then. They would hang these cups all around the washing tub so everybody could take the dipper that was in the tub and dip up the drink that they preferred or wanted, or how much they wanted.

My husband liked to drink but not to excess and he in later years told me that, uh, lots of nights after the party, he would be the most sober one there. I sometimes wonder how they … ‘course they lived close by, they could get home okay … But they enjoyed it and they had a lot of fun. He enjoyed playing.

Partial Transcript: No. There was no named band at that time. It was just my, my husband, and two wives men brothers. They didn’t call it an … the band was not named anything at that time.

Interviewer

What kind of home did he grow up in?

Interviewer

He grew up on Penson Creek, which now known as, um, part of it is (23:05 = indecipherable). He grew up where Aunt Zonia was raised. His house where he lived was on one side of the hill and hers was on the other, just directly across from where his home was. And he learned to plow the gardens when he was – he had to start planting when he was eight or nine years old. And he learned … their home had two fireplaces, a fireplace in his father’s bedroom and a fireplace in what was then known as the parlor or the sitting room. And his sisters, during the wintertime, enjoyed baking potatoes in this hellacious of a fireplace.

So early on, he learned to plant an extra, what they call a patch of potatoes so that his sisters could have all the potatoes they wanted to bake during the wintertime. Now, he helped make the family potatoes, that the whole family and his mother used to cook but he grew and extra patch for his sisters so they could have all the baked potatoes to enjoy before bedtime at night, and they also grew a lot of popcorn. He never enjoyed the popcorn but he grew it so his sisters could have popcorn. Now, the only thing on the farm that he didn’t learn to help with was milking the cows. He had to take care of the horses and do the plowing but the sisters had to learn to take care of the cows and the chickens, gather the eggs and do the milking and the old-fashioned churning, which was with an up and down dicer.

Partial Transcript: Interviewer

When did he start playing his guitar?

In his early teens.

Interviewer

Oh he, um, he did the … helped with all the farm work at home, and then neighbors who could afford to hire and to hoe and plant, he worked for the neighbors and he also early learned to do grafting and beekeeping. He started keeping bees when he was nine years old so that they could have some kind of sweetening. He had bees from the time he was nine until he passed away at eighty-six. He still had bees when he passed away but he was not able to take care of them at that time. He, uh, grafted for other people. They would have, uh, little trees – little apple trees come up and he had gathered over his early years several different times good apples. So people would pay him a little bit of money to come and graft their little apple trees so they could have apples, good apple stews.

Interviewer

Oh, when he first began to perform? He was thirteen or fourteen.

Interviewer

Because he could make more money performing than he could make working on the farm, doing all this other work.

Interviewer

Oh, he would maybe get one dollar or two dollars or three dollars, even, because the three men would share whatever was put in the hat and sometimes there was enough for him to have a dollar, sometimes enough for him to get two dollars or even three dollars. But he was happy with one dollar because it was much easier than hoeing corn for twenty-five or fifty cents all day long.

Interviewer

To begin with, when he first started playing.

Interviewer

It depended on, um, how much these people had in their pockets and how much they felt like they could, uh, afford to put in my hat.

Interviewer

No, no, there was no mode of travelling. He had to walk to get to Plumtree and it was from where he lived – it was at least ten to fifteen miles. So there was no mode of travelling except for his bag or wagon.

Partial Transcript: The Grand Ole Opry? Well, he from the time he could get his first radio, when – I guess that was after he built the store and first moved to Sunnybrook, he, uh, listened to the radio. That was something new and the Grand Ole Opry he loved and, uh, Hayes was the man in charge of the, um, Grand Ole Opry at that time. And, uh, from the time he started listening to his radio, there was another young man in the community who wanted to learn to pick the guitar. His name was Jimmy Vance, and Jimmy today still is performing in (33:21) Carlson or Eunice while (unclear names).

And at the time that Myron got to play, he and his sister with their band on the Grand Ole Opry – He was, um, playing in – Spruce Pine had a little fair every fall. They had what they call the fairgrounds and people would gather and – But this time there was a Ferris Wheel and a merry-go-round and different performances in the fairgrounds. But he and his band, with Cal as the announcer, play in this fair. It lasted for a week and they would play every afternoon in the fairgrounds.

And during this time, I don’t remember how Myron got invited to come to the Grand Old Opry and perform, but I remember I got to go with their band. But this time I had been working at the hosiery mill, the first mill that came to Spruce Pine. So Myron readied their car, and there was two men and his sister and her friend, there was two men and two ladies and Myron and I all in this one car with their instruments. And, uh, he had booked rooms for us girls and for the guys in a hotel. I don’t remember the name of it but somewhere in Nashville, close to, um, where the Grand Ole Opry would be on – on Saturday nights, and that’s where they did their performance on the Grand Ole Opry.

And I’m sure if he could have kept the band together after that, guys decided they – He had one band that two guys decided they could go to California and make a lot of money with their music. So they left Myron and he had to get new people to help him with his band, which he could always find new people. But that one performance was all they ever got to do because some time, about this time, they started the, uh, music in the theater there in Spruce Pine.

Partial Transcript: Why did they start the barn dance? Because, um, Cal loved to do announcing and Myron loved to play, and they decided that if they could get started in the theater there in Spruce Pine, that they could have their own Grand Ole Opry right there in Spruce Pine. So, from the beginning, the barn dance was a success because we had a lot of local people who played and a lot of people who came from different places to play like the Carter sister – the Carter family. And really, it was very successful. I’m sure Cal could tell you or did tell you how many years he kept it in operation and what happened when it was – when there was no longer a station available to carry it.

Interviewer

He did remember that, how many stations it was broadcast on.

Interviewer

Well, there was – There was a couple with their father called the Burleson Sisters. And … I remember the, uh, Jen Atkins … Our story and his band – There was just more than I can remember because I didn’t – I made sure my husband got to go while I took over the store and caring of everything. And – But I don’t remember the names of too many people that did perform.

Partial Transcript: Well, there was one funny story about my husband that, um – He always, uh, checked and made sure the players that were going onstage were read in. One night, it was somebody from the Grand Ole Opry there and he had been drinking, so Cal and Myron did not allow drinking. And this person, whomever he was, was not accustomed to somebody telling him he couldn’t perform. But my husband told him – he said, uh, “There’s no way I’m gonna let you perform and you drinking like you are, or have been.” And sometime later, somebody asked my husband, “Did you know who that was?” He said, “No, I had no idea who it was and I don’t care.” He said we had that for a rule and nobody was allowed to go out there that we knew was drinking. So they made quite a joke out of it because Myron had not let this person from the Grand Ole Opry perform onstage there in Spruce Pine.

Interviewer

I don’t remember who it was. Gloria might remember but I don’t.

Partial Transcript: Oh, our store? We had two gasoline pumps out front and we had all the car parts for whatever cars were made back then. We had, um, everything that the animals would need. We kept feed of kinds for horses, cows, chickens, everything. And there was an ice cream box, and that was the only freezer we had was – The ice cream was in one end of the box and the other part we kept steaks and whatever kind of meat was available, like hot dogs, bologna and cheese, things like that. We had clothing and shoes and we had bulks of cloth of all kinds, everything a family would need down to pins and needles and thread and produce of all kinds, stalks – whole stalks of bananas. Oranges we didn’t have all the time but we had trucks that would come from Florida. Always had plenty of oranges during Christmas.

Interviewer

Well we had overalls and shirts and dresses.

Interviewer

We had, um, a few trucks who came – We had a truck that came from, uh, Asheville? And we had a truck that came from Johnson City. Our feed and flour and meal – cornmeal and things like that came from Tennessee.

Partial Transcript: He, um, went to work in American Thread in Seville, and he worked there on the third shift – no, second shift – for fifteen years. And after the fifteen years working there, his health would not allow him – He retired early due to bad health.

Interviewer

We think it did. But there was no way to prove that it did. He retired with no retirement and, uh, the wages that they had paid – I can still – I think I took his what, social security? Whatever? And I still did around five hundred dollars a month through his, working at American Thread and what social security he could take in.

Interviewer

He had a muscular disease that his, um, his muscles were tearing apart and moving off in his urine. And they told us he only had one chance to get something done for that. So we brought him here to Asheville to Memorial Mission and they gave him what I called a horse dose of, uh, mustard gas. Mustard gas had been tried on a few people with his 53:09 (indecipherable) and he had to sign for the mustard gas to be given to him, just one dose, one big shot. And it worked, but from the time –

Interviewer

After Myron had the shot of mustard gas, they started treating him with, uh, all the cancer treatments that they had at that time because that would help control the pain that he was having. He still had some pain but the muscles were not tearing apart anymore. We kept checkups regularly to know how the, uh, treatments were doing, and they would take him off the treatments for maybe a week and then he would have to start taking the – either shots or pills. But I had him for twenty-three years after they told me that he only had one chance to live.

Interviewer

And he passed away from a broken hip.

Interviewer

No, he was fine all during the barn dance.

Partial Transcript: Oh, Spruce Pine is known as the mineral city. There are more minerals mined and found in and around Spruce Pine than any other place, any other – That’s why we have the mineral, uh, festival every year?

Interviewer

The, uh, Harris Mining Company was – They, uh, mined for feldspar and mica, and now, I think, Harris Mining – Back when my husband was alive, they were going down in the earth out from, uh, where Harris’s mining factory is, and that’s where they found quartz, and that’s what Unimin is now producing, quartz, and using them in the airplanes and different things. Uh, my sister’s husband worked for Harris Mining – oh, I don’t know – twenty-some years, I guess or maybe longer. And she told me just this past week that Unimin now has three plants that are working with the quartz, but they have two plants over near Bakersfield and one there at the old place where Harris Mining first started. That’s why we built the country store there. This company was coming in to mine and we felt like there would be more business right there, which there was.

Interviewer

It was operated – It gave our men in the community and from Spruce Pine work when the – when they did work for them.

Interviewer

Oh, they were very friendly and adapted to our community and our little town. In fact, I really think they liked what they found very much.

Interviewer

It started out as Harris Mining and then it was called Kaolin, and then from Kaolin to Unimin, which is all the same plant. They just produce different things. All of that and the back of Sunnybrook Store has been mined for the kaolin.

Partial Transcript: We had, um – There was another hosiery mill – Ellen’s Knitting Mill came into town and there was, um, children’s clothing plant that came in. And then later we had two furniture factories come in and they have both closed now. In fact, Robert Bailey bought the Ethan Allen plant and moved his workers that make the buck stoves and the buck stove inserts. And now they’re making a lantern sold on the stove, a lantern from Gloria’s book “The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree” and for my ninety-seventh birthday, he made me a metal card with the face of the same book on it. A Christmas tree with a red bow and a little girl chopping down the Christmas tree, a little girl which is Ruthie.

Partial Transcript: Well, I think we have wonderful kids, wonderful young men and women and wonderful children. I think, as there always has been, some who get a lot of public attention – they are not what they should be. But I still believe that we have good foundations for these children. We have some good parents and wonderful teachers and our children today are just as children were back in my day. They are still wonderful people.

Interviewer

Well, they should be able – And some of them may have to go back to the farms and learn to plant a hill of potatoes and to plant beans and corn and to plant and grow their own food. And more and more, I think they are learning that because we have community gardens springing up everywhere and we have little gardens starting in and around our little towns. So I think people are gradually learning to make their own way like we had to do in the beginning, in the early days. And young people are trying to learn how to freeze food and can food.

They have depended too much on going to the market and grocery store and picking up everything. And I think I would tell them, even out – If they don’t own a little patch of land, most people will share what land they have in their yard or backyard or whatever. And it’s amazing how easy it is to grow squash and cucumbers, lettuce, mustard greens, all kinds of good food in a small little patch. Gloria has a sister-in-law and her husband out in Arkansas that are planting their first garden. How old are they, Gloria?

And I – My husband’s mother died in 1931 and there was one of her daughters who kept her seed beans. Back in those days we had to grow our own seeds and save them to have to plant in the spring. Well, my husband and I got married in 1940. He passed away in ’93.

Well, it must have been around 1990 that he found out his sister had kept their mother’s seed all these years and kept replanting it. So we got some of those bean seed after all those years and – I had friends growing those beans – So this couple in Arkansas wanted us to get them some old-fashioned bean seed. So I got them what is known as the Myron bean because his mother grew them, and we had a sheriff in Newland whose name was, um, something. Anyway, he grew some beans that were very good, and I have a friend who still grows beans for Gloria and me and cans them called the greasy bean. And so they’re a white bean, and it only grows about three or four inches long but it’s very tasty and good. It’s a pole bean. You’ve got to have poles for it to grow on or corn for it to climb.

And I got all three of those beans and Gloria sent them to these people, and they called back the other night. They already have those beans planted with corn for them to climb on. And, um, the one that comes from my husband’s mother grows a bean – It’s, um, pink tip. It has pink tips on the end and it’s, um, a kind of yellow bean. Most people call it white but it’s kind of yellow. But that bean grows at least from twelve inches – ten, twelve, thirteen inches long. What I mean is, uh, huge bean, and there so nice and tender and tasty. And I’m hoping these people will have luck in their seventies with their – They call them heritage beans because they’re – they’ve been around for all of my life. But I mean they’ve been around at least, I know, for ninety-some years and they’re probably over a hundred years old because they’ve been handed down from family to family all these years.

Last year this lady canned forty-two quarts of the little greasy – They look greasy. It’s why they call them greasy bean, the hull looks like it’s been greased. Fred Banner. That was the sheriff’s name so we have the Jay Myron beans, the Fred Banner beans, and the greasy beans all growing in Arkansas. And I’m sure they’re up by now because they’ve been getting a lot of warm rain.

Partial Transcript: Well, they all need to be taught to be honest, to treat every color of skin as if it were his brother. They need to be fair and they need to pray a lot. I still do a lot of praying. I can’t see to cook anymore – I love to cook – but I can’t see to cook, so Gloria does the cooking and I do the eating. And above all, when you can’t do the things that you’ve always done, find something to keep your hands busy and your brain active. I could read up until two years ago, and now I can’t see to read and write. I can still under a certain light, write my name and, um, maybe a few lines, so and so. But children should especially learn to care, to give, and to share. That’s what life should be about, loving, caring, sharing, and a lot of praying.

Interviewer

Lot of trusting and a lot of faith.

Partial Transcript: Why should we not let it be forgotten? Because we have so many, many young people who need to be involved with some form of music and our children – our young people – need to know that what you can be enjoyed. And really they need to have more things like the barn dance going on for young people. I think the big reason that we have, uh, so many young people get involved in drugs and drinking and all this gook they don’t need is because they are not involved in singing and playing an instrument of some sort, even if it’s a tin can or, uh, making a drum out of a washing – I believe in music and I believe in singing and I believe in, uh, people enjoying all these things. And we don’t need to forget where it first started and how could it started.

Interviewer

Oh, we need music, more music, more singing. Young people and children need to sing their little hearts out. They need to learn to play an instrument of some kind, if possible. I remember Gloria was a lucky little girl. We had a lady who walked two miles two or three times a week to teach her her piano even before she ever started school. We had a piano that was over a hundred years old. My aunt gave it to me so Gloria would have something to learn music on. We put it in the hallway in the old store upstairs and this friend of mine – this lady who had had training – would walk those one mile out to my place and a mile back to teach Gloria her piano lessons long before she started school.

Now she loves listening to music and things happened during the barn dance that caused her not to go on with country music. It was all my fault and more than ever, I want each child, if possible, to have music training of some kind. And we need more places like the old barn dance to get these young people off the streets and get them involved in good music and good singing, even if they can’t carry a tune in a bucket. They need to be taught.

I have one little great granddaughter who has perfect pitch and a beautiful voice and I have another little granddaughter – great granddaughter, they’re great granddaughters – that can’t have pitch, but she loves to sing. And when school started this last year – they’re both twelve years old now – both been doing a lot of singing all their lives. The one with perfect pitch when she was two years old would sing “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star (How I Wonder What You Are).” And the one who doesn’t have perfect pitch just loves to sing, and I said, “Gloria, you tell her mama, whatever she does, to get that child in Glee club, even though she’s now twelve.”

She lost her music teacher sometime last year. Her teacher quit teaching in the school, their singing and all. And I said, “That child loves to sing. She needs that.” And now she tells Gloria there’s nothing better than going to school in the morning and having the lessons that she loves and men in the afternoon singing in her Glee club group. So if they can’t do anything else, they can get together in the Glee club or in the church. They need music, and yes, we don’t need to forget the old barn dance because it brought young people from everywhere, and a lot of them went on to become famous and a lot of them were famous at the time.

Partial Transcript: I think I’ve told you about everything I know. Just make sure you don’t let the old barn dance be forgotten, ‘cause Cal and I know that our days are – We can’t live over another hundred years. Maybe a few more years for me and not many more for Cal because his body is wearing out, bless his heart. And the sad thing, Cal has not been able to see for such a long time, and I have been able to – I can still distinguish and take care of myself, except we don’t want me cooking and, uh, I can’t see to sew or make things. I can’t see the dust in the floor too much and my back won’t let me use the vacuum, not even the broom too much. But I still enjoy life and still enjoy being with Gloria. She is the best.