Alma Avery Interview

Alma Avery

Alma Avery:

0: 00:01:00Well, I was a Logan, and I'm an Avery now. I am a Logan/Avery. I growed up on Cedar Creek way back in the mountains, way back down there. We had a kind of hard time, but it was a good life and everything. My dad, he worked us out for people. We had mules and cows. He’d work us out with the other people, and all day long sometime we’d work, and people would give us a nickel or twenty-five cents. After we done worked all day we about didn’t get nothing. And then we’d go home crying. My daddy would say, “Quit that crying! You got enough to get some pinto beans.” He said, “We’ll get some pinto beans, and we’ll have beans tomorrow,” and we’d quit crying. Then the next day, same old thing. He’d send us back again.

Interviewer:

What kind of work were you doing?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:02:00We’d work in the fields and plant greens and plow. The old mule, mule Sepoy (?) couldn’t pull the plow. Sometime we’d have to help the mule push the plow, and Daddy sent us one time to get some groceries at the grocery store. We went down to get the groceries and wind up carrying the groceries and leaving the mule, because he was so poor he couldn’t carry us. And we come on back home, just give out. We’d go back home and try to eat what we had. We didn’t have that much to eat. Sometime we had greens for dinner, and we’d eat that for dinner and save the soup for the night, cook cornbread and put in the soup to have it for night. We couldn’t eat before Daddy come home, because Mama was scared we’d eat it all up, and he wouldn’t get anything and be fussing about it. That’s just about the way it was all along. And then we didn’t have a—didn’t really have anything to sleep on. We’d go to bed, and we had mattresses, but we had straw hay, hay you get out of the field put in the mattress. We’d sleep on that until it would wear out. Then it would wear out and be so thin it’d just be dry, and we’d throw it out and get some more put in. Then when the snow would come at night, we had big old paste boards in the window, and the snow would come through the paste board in the room where we were. Just curtains and things, just whatever you could get to hang up. We had a bad life and all, but God was always with us. I tell you, I told my daddy when I was about seven year old, I said, “The Lord has touched me. The Lord has touched me.” And I began praising the Lord and shouting. He said, “I didn’t think I'd ever have anybody that could come and stand up against me and tell me about my life, and she told me I wasn’t living right. I better get a hold of Jesus.” He said, “That made me go down in the basement down there. I wind up praying. I come back in the house, and I change too.” He said, “I quit treating them like I did and all because Alma stood up against me. Her just seven year old, and she told me I wasn’t living right.” Then we go on then, and the people would come by. I'd tell them about Jesus, and he said, “She ain’t only told me. She telling the other people. Something happened to her.” I said, “They sure did. God changed my life.” I'd go on then, and we’d go down there and work for these other people, and this man down there, he wanted to flirt with me. I wouldn’t flirt with him enough, and then he’d take his socks off at night. They’d be muddy and wet, and he’d throw them in my face. I'd get mad and go home, because I was supposed to stay all night and get up early in the morning and work for him. I'd get mad and go home. It’d be about dark, and Daddy, he would get mad at me because I come home and make me go back.

Interviewer:

Who was it? Who were you working for?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:03:00Working for Buck Murphy. He was a white man. A white man and his son would throw his socks in my face and all. He was pretty bad. He wanted to flirt with us, and I wouldn’t flirt with him.

Interviewer:

What kind of work were you doing for him?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:04:00We were working in the field pulling corn, cutting tops, plowing, whatever. We plowed with that old turning plow. You couldn’t hardly see over the top of it, I was so little. But still, we was plowing the mule. We’d do all that in the summertime, and in the wintertime when it was so bad didn’t get to go to school because I don’t have no education. I can read a little bit now because I tried to read and do a little. I didn’t get to go to school. My friends, my little white girls, the school bus would come and pick them up. But we couldn’t ride the school bus. They would cry, because we’d play all day and sleep together and everything. But when the school bus come, we couldn’t go to school.

Interviewer:

Why couldn’t you go to school?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:05:00That was just the law back then. We didn’t go—black people didn’t mix with the whites. We couldn’t go to school.

Interviewer:

Was there a school for the black community?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:06:00 Huh?

Interviewer:

Was there a school for the black community?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:07:00No. but after so long they passed a law that everybody had to go to school. And then what little bit we went, I was getting about twelve then. The black school bus come down about—we had to walk about six mile to catch it. It be cold, Lord, cold in the wintertime. We’d go down there, and the school bus would be done come and gone. Then we’d have to go back home cold and freezing. We’d heat rocks in the fireplace, wrap them up in towels and put in our pockets to stay warm enough to get down to the school bus.

Interviewer:

Where was the school?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:08:00In Ralston (?).

Interviewer:

Tell me about the school.

Alma Avery:

0: 00:09:00Well, I didn’t get to go much, because Daddy would keep us out and make us work. Miss Davis, she was a school teacher. We started in first grade, and the kids would laugh at us, because we were so big in the first grade. They’d laugh at us, and Miss Davis, she’d say, “I teach the second grade. That is some nice girls,” of me and my sister. “That is some nice girls. Let me have them in the second grade.” So she took us into second grade what little while we were there, I guess about two or three months that I went to school, and then I quit school, because Daddy kept us out to work. I quit school and started coming up back home doing whatever I could do. We’d can. We’d make sauerkraut and canned beans in the summertime, because if we didn’t, in the wintertime you didn’t eat. Then we’d can, chop it with a knife, just stand there and chop them cabbage with a knife until they got real fine. But now you don’t have to do that. Then I started—

Interviewer:

What else did you can?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:10:00 Huh?

Interviewer:

What other kinds of vegetables did you can?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:11:00We’d can green beans, tomato soup and jellies and jams, just whatever was coming along. We made it. I’m still making it too. I been selling it now for I guess about thirty years since I quit—retired from the plant. I been selling it, and then they stopped us from selling it on the tailgate, because it had to have that certified kitchen. See, I don’t read and write, and I don’t get the labels and everything, so I still sell some to people that really like to buy it. They still buy it from me. But I can’t sell it at the tailgate because they stopped us. I said, “Seventy-five or eighty years selling stuff, and then the government or whatever come along and stopped us from doing it.” I said, “That really ain’t right, but you got to go along with whatever they do.”

Interviewer:

Tell me about the canning. You didn’t have a stove, I assume, at that time.

Alma Avery:

0: 00:12:00We had a wood stove, a wood stove. We’d burn—wood stove, and we’d can and just learn how to do it. But now I have an electric stove, and I can. I can, and I never have anything to spoil. I never had nobody fussing about nothing spoiling or tasted bad or spoilt. But thirty-something years at the tailgate—well, I had one woman in all them years. She wanted green beans. She wanted pickle beans. I got her a jar of pickle beans, and when she opened them she come back and said, “Them is sour beans. Them is sour beans.” I said, “Well, you wanted pickle beans. Pickle beans and sour beans are different. You asked for pickle beans.” Got that straightened out and everything, but she was the only woman that’s ever had a complaint about anything I canned or fixed.

Interviewer:

Tell me about your daddy.

Alma Avery:

0: 00:13:00My daddy—my daddy, he was pretty rough. Now, he put the lead on you. He’d tell you to go out and do something and you didn’t do it, you got a busting. We’d take a switch. He’d make us go and get our own switch to whip us with, and we’d take a knife and trim around it so when he’d draw back to hit us it’d break. Then we’d get a double whipping. Then we’d get a cold or sick or something, and he’d doctor us with castor oil. He’d put it in orange juice. I still can’t hardly eat orange juice, because I can taste that orange juice. And the rest of them would take their castor oil. Sometimes I'd slip and pour mine out, and they’d be running to the bathroom. Well, not the bathroom, to the woods. Didn’t have no bathroom. He’d say, “How come she ain’t going? Hers ain’t working.” Then he’d find out I wasn’t taking mine, and he’d give me a double dose. I'd have to take it again.

Interviewer:

Where was your daddy from?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:14:00He was from back up in Nearing (?), back up in that way somewhere. I really don’t know.

Interviewer:

Do you know about his early life growing up?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:15:00No. I don’t know too much about his life. I know he told my mama he made liquor. We’d have to go and take the sugar and stuff to the still. He told my mama he was dating—he was dating my mama, and then he had to make some time for selling whiskey. Then when he come back my mama was dating this other guy. He walked up to her and said, “If gold was on your right and silver was on your left, which one would you choose?” She said, “I'd choose the left.” He took her by the arm and walked off with her, and he married her.

Interviewer:

Do you know—and he was a farmer, and he made liquor?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:16:00He didn’t farm that much, just little gardens. Didn’t have that much place to farm at. He made liquor, and we’d have to go and take sugar and stuff to the liquor still in those big old barrels. I remember one time I had a barrel on my shoulder. My brother’s barrel fell off and went down that big old hill, boom, boom, boom. He said, “My barrel is going down to the creek!” We couldn’t find it no more, because it went on down and busted out. Then the mailman, he always liked my daddy’s whiskey. He said, “I ain’t supposed to tell you all this, but if you know where the liquor still is, you go and tell your daddy they got it surrounded, and he better get out of there.” And before we got to where the liquor still was, they done surrounded him. My brother was running through the mountains. They’re trying to catch him. They caught John Forny, handcuffed him to the tree. My brother, he said, “Boy, his little shirttail was flying. But we got him on top of the mountain.” They finally got him, and he had to make I believe six months on the chain gang. The lawyer told him—he said, “Judge, you go easy with me. I was just trying to make a little money so we could have a little Christmas money.” He said, “I'm going to go easy with you, boy, but if I had your backer, I would put him to the work. I would really give him some time.” They knew it was Daddy, because Daddy was so smart he never did get caught. He said, “We would sure sock it to him.” They give him six months.

Interviewer:

Was this during Prohibition?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:17:00 Huh?

Interviewer:

This was during Prohibition?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:18:00Yeah, they’d put him on the road and then on the jail, locked him up for six months.

Interviewer:

Tell me about your mom.

Alma Avery:

0: 00:19:00Well, my mom was scared of my daddy. He was kind of rough, and he was jealous or something. Somebody would come to the house, and he’d think he was looking at her or something. Then he’d get on to her, try to whip her and all that. We’d take up for her. One time my brother and my sister went to the store. He sent all of us to the store so he could get on Mama while we were gone. Britt said, “You hide down there under the house, and if he starts with her, you go in there and get on to him.” They went on to the store. He started with my mama, started with my mama. My mama started running up the hill. He started after her. When he grabbed her, I grabbed his shirttail and pulled him down in the gully. He said, “You turn me loose! You ain’t supposed to be here!” I said, “I didn’t know. I didn’t know.” He said, “You turn me loose! You turn me loose!” I was holding onto him, because he was beating my mama, and I wouldn’t let him do that. He finally quit hitting on Mama.

Interviewer:

You were her defender.

Alma Avery:

0: 00:20:00Yeah. We didn’t have no bathroom. We just had to go out to the woods wherever you could go, find a different place every time. We didn’t have no paper. We’d use catalogs or whatever you could find. We just growed up that way.

Interviewer:

Where did your mama grow up?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:21:00She grew up down in Lake Lure down in there somewhere around Marion.

Interviewer:

Do you know about her life growing up?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:22:00No, I don’t. No.

Interviewer:

Tell me about childhood growing up in this community.

Alma Avery:

0: 00:23:00About where?

Interviewer:

About being a child and your early memories growing up.

Alma Avery:

0: 00:24:00Well, that’s about the way it were.

Interviewer:

What was your favorite thing to play?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:25:00Oh, we played—get wheels and lids and things off of buckets and curl them around. Didn’t have no baby dolls and stuff like that. This white man, he liked my daddy. He sold baby dolls, and my daddy bought my baby sister a baby doll. I think he give ten dollars or twelve dollars for it when he could have split it up and bought all three of us one. I never did get over that. Never did, because my baby sister had this baby doll, and we didn’t have anything. We’d have maybe two or three little pieces of candy in a box for Christmas. Maybe an apple now and then. I look at them laying out there on the ground. Maybe an apple or orange or piece of candy or two for Christmastime. But during the year we didn’t get anything.

Interviewer:

And in terms of—as you were growing up what age did you start working out in the field?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:26:00I was cooking in the house when I was six years old, and I guess about seven. I’d cry to go to the field, because I loved the field. Daddy would make me go to the field and then go back home and cook dinner about ten or eleven o’clock, have dinner for the rest, because I wouldn’t stay home. Since I wanted to go to the field, he’d make me go to the field and then send me back home to cook. I got the field and the cooking. I’d do both.

Interviewer:

Tell me about the kinds of things you used to cook when you were a kid.

Alma Avery: 0: 00:27:00Oh, we’d cook cabbage and whatever you could get a hold of, potatoes, pinto beans, stuff like that.

Interviewer:

What was your favorite thing to eat?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:28:00I really don’t know. Pinto beans I guess. We could really get a hold of some pinto beans.

Interviewer:

Did you grow pinto beans here?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:29:00No, no. We’d have them to sell, sell them at the store. We had this white man at the store. One time we went down there on this mule. We’d ride this old mule down there, and then it rained and lighteninged. Oh, it was bad that year. The lightning struck. My sister was in front on the mule, and I was behind. She had a chain on the mule for a bridle, and that lightning struck that chain and kind of hit her a little bit. We went on down there to Lun Frady’s (?), and he said, “Your daddy send you down there? You ain’t going back tonight.” He made us a pallet on the floor. He said, “Let him worry about where you're at.” He never did show up or nothing the next day. You had to walk so far you didn’t have no way to get nowhere. The next day my daddy came down there. Lun Frady told him, “Sending them down here in the rain and thunder and like that, I put them a bed on the floor and let them stay here tonight.” We stayed down there at Mr. Frady’s.

Interviewer:

Mr. Frady was the owner of the store?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:30:00 Yeah.

Interviewer:

Tell me about the store.

Alma Avery:

0: 00:31:00Well, he had groceries, and we’d smoke back there. We’d slip around and smoke. My brother would get cigarettes, and Mr. Frady knowed we smoked, and he’d let us have cigarettes. When he died, I still owed him some money. He said, “Don’t worry about it” when he got old. “If you don’t never pay us, that’s all right.” My brother would have two cigarettes, and we’d make him tear them in two. But my daddy was clueless if he knowed we smoked, so I smoked from on up until after I got married. I live here and everything, and I got real, real sick. I wasn’t supposed to live. They said about three more days. And the Lord spoke to me and told me to read the fourth chapter, and the thirty-first verse of that said, “You’ll be healed.” I remember that, because the Lord had told me that. He sent this white woman off of the mountain at Bat Cave and told me to come to my house, that I needed help. I was going down the road with my baby in my arms crying, and I was hurting. She said, “Come on, now. Go back to the house. The Lord told me to come pray for you. I'm going back to pray for you.” She brought me back to the house, and she prayed for me. Nothing happened. She prayed again. Nothing happened. She said, “I know the Lord sent me.” I ain’t told her what the Lord spoke to me. I reached and got the bible and handed it to her. She said, “I'm going to read you the fourth chapter and the thirty-first verse of that.” I said, “The Lord spoke to me three days ago and told me to read that.” She said, “When they have prayed a prayer, the place was shaken where they were, and they all were filled with the Holy Ghost and spake the word of God with boldness.” I said, “My Lord and My God.” The Holy Ghost hit me, and I went down the road praising the Lord barefooted, dancing and shouting. Miss Thompson lived down here in this other house, and they said, “Alma Avery got the Holy Ghost. Alma Avery got the Holy Ghost,” and I was praising God because I knew I had something I didn’t never have before.

Interviewer:

Did you have—were there doctors that your family would see?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:32:00Yeah, we had a doctor. We had a doctor place up there at Bat Cave and used to be a hospital up there. But it burned down. They burned it down.

Female Speaker :

Was that Dr. Bonds?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:33:00Dr. Bonds and Dr. Zuick. (?)

Interviewer:

Tell me about it.

Female Speaker:

That was a health clinic that Dr. George Bonds set up in Bat Cave. She’s talking after she’s

married now.

Alma Avery:

0: 00:34:00Dr. Bonds was a good doctor, but I never did get to go to Dr. Bonds too much. But Dr. Zuick was really my doctor, and then Dr. Birch. Dr. Birch was still a doctor. Dr. Birch doctored me coming on up to I guess about—I guess about eight or ten year ago. Then I got cancer. I got cancer, and my daughter was an RN at Mission Hospital. She took me away from down there and took me over to Asheville and checked it out and everything. I'm still supposed to have cancer, but they can’t find it right now.

Interviewer:

What about—who did you see when you were growing up as a child? Did you see a doctor?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:35:00Didn’t see no doctor. I never went to a doctor until I come up here. I come up here and went to Bat Cave Hospital when I got sick. They gave me a little jar and told me to go get a specimen. I didn’t know what he talking about, go get a specimen. Dr. Zuick, he was funny anyway. I stood him back in the bathroom waiting, waiting. Finally the nurse came in and said, “You're supposed to get a specimen.” I said, “I don’t know what you meant.” Dr. Zuick said, “You wet in the jar.” (laughs) I didn’t know what to do. I ain’t never been to no doctor before, so that’s when I started going to the doctor.

Interviewer:

What did people do in the community when they had a cold or they got sick?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:36:00Well, they took boneset, rabbit tobacco, lion’s tongue, stuff like that. Boil it, drink it. It was good. It would really work. Sometime it work now. Sometime I go to the doctor and stuff, and it don’t do it. But give me an old remedy and it knock it out.

Interviewer:

Tell me what things would you use for what problems?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:37:00Just for a cold or something like that we’d have boneset. You’d boil it real good. It’d be real black and tasty. But it would clear it up.

Interviewer:

Is that an herb?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:38:00 Uh-huh.

Interviewer:

Is that a plant?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:39:00No, it’s a boneset like a—I can’t see none growing around here right now. Do you know what lion’s tongue is?

Interviewer:

Uh-huh.

Alma Avery:

0: 00:40:00Well, it looks just like it. And rabbit tobacco. Do you know what rabbit tobacco is? You don’t? It’s got a white bloom on it. You see it all on the banks. What is that other—I can’t think what it is right now. Elderberries. Do you know what elderberries—that’s good. I get that for people at the tailgate now. Every year I get them some elderberries, and they’ll get me the vodka and put on it. It’s for you start sneezing and stuff for a cold. You start taking it. It will really knock it out.

Interviewer:

Tell me about your house, your first house when you were growing up. Who built it?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:41:00Who built it? I don’t know, just a big old two-story building. That’s all I know, and we moved in it. There wasn’t hardly no houses. There weren’t no houses around there when I lived there. But now there’s several.

Interviewer:

How many rooms were in the house?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:42:00It was—I believe it was one, two, three—three downstairs and two upstairs.

Interviewer:

And how did you heat the house?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:43:00Heat it with the fireplace. We had to carry big old oak logs in. Sometime you’d have to stay bent over two or three minutes before you could get up when you got it off your shoulder. Put that big log on the back and put the other wood in it. Your legs would be burning up and white and splotted and back end freezing. (laughs)

Interviewer:

And did you cook on that stove too?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:44:00Sometime we’d hang a pot of beans in there. But we cooked on the cook stove.

Interviewer:

And any other memories of that house growing up?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:45:00Well, we had to carry water from the spring. Sometime it would be really cold, your hand would be froze to the bucket when you got to the house. It’s a wonder I'm still living, but the Lord has kept me here for something.

Interviewer:

How far was the spring from the house?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:46:00I guess about half a mile maybe, or half of a half mile.

Interviewer:

Whose job was it to bring the water to the house?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:47:00It was all of us. We’d have to kind of take times. We’d have buckets of water we’d drink out of with gourds. We’ve have a gourd, and everybody would drink out of the same bucket.

Interviewer:

The gourds were made out of squash?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:48:00Made out of gourds like you have now. I've got one hanging up down on the wall now. Cut a hole in it and drink out of that.

Interviewer:

And what about the clothes that you wore? Did your mom make them?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:49:00Oh, we’d have clothes—when people that knowed us that lived way off, they’d send us clothes and shoes. Sometime they’d send us high-heeled shoes, and we’re just little old kids. We’d cut the heels off of them, and the toes would be looking back up at you. And then sometime they’d be so tight on your feet it would hurt. But you had to wear something.

Interviewer:

Any other memories of your childhood that you—what about your brothers and sisters? Can you tell me something about them?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:50:00My sisters—my oldest sister, she left home when she was pretty young and got a job with white people. My other sister, one day I remember we’d gone to the other place and wash clothes for the people. We’d go down and wash clothes and iron for the white people. My sister said, “I'm going down to X’s and wash this morning.” But she was leaving home, but she didn’t tell me. She got out there on the hill, and she had her clothes hid out there on the hill. I said, “What is that?” She said, “Oh, Daddy’s sending some clothes down to my sister’s house.” We went on down to the white people’s house. She said, “Heat the water up, and I'll be back in about an hour.” All day long went by, and she ain’t come back yet, so finally we decided that she was gone. She’d go down the road. She said, “They fed me on cornbread and peas, fed me on cornbread and peas. That’s why I'm going on leave.” She’s sing that all the way down the road. I didn’t know what she was doing. She didn’t come back home with us, so she left home. My other sister, she finally left. She was bad. Everywhere Lenny went, there was a fight. She’d fight you back. She left home, and my baby sister, I started dating this guy down there. He’d come up here to Edneyville picking apples. I met him. I was I guess about fourteen, fourteen or fifteen. I met him, and I never did learn how to put the apple sack on. He’d put it on me all the time, and the other three girls, they’d get mad at him, because he wouldn’t put it on them, wouldn’t flirt with them or wouldn’t act like he liked them. We’d come back the next day. Finally when the last week came we were through. He said, “Tell Alma I'm going to come to see her if she want me to, but she’s going to have to tell me she want me to come.” I was bashful, and I wouldn’t tell him. He said, “She’s going to have to tell me if she wants me to come.” Finally I said, “Okay, you can come.” He waited I guess two or three weeks before he ever come. When he come, I was so mad, because he hadn’t come before that. We started walking to Nebo Church. He’d go in the truck, and I wouldn’t ride. He said, “That’s okay then. I'll go on back home.” So he turned around and went back, and then I'd get mad then because I didn’t say nothing to him, because he gone. Finally he came back and took me home, took us home from the church. Then he kept coming up until we got married.

Interviewer:

What was his name?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:51:00 Huh?

Interviewer:

What was his name?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:52:00Oscar Avery.

Interviewer:

Tell me about getting married and all that.

Alma Avery:

0: 00:53:00Well, we got married, and I had one boy, and then I had a girl, then had two boys. We growed them up and everything. We lived here until he died.

Interviewer:

Tell me about your life as a young bride.

Alma Avery:

0: 00:54:00It was pretty good. We lived out there in a little old shack out there for a little while. We lived out there with his mom. I didn’t like it, so I finally talked him into building, and we built this house out here. We moved out here, but his mom was still there. She’d come out there. She could smell sweet potatoes anywhere, and I'd see her coming. I'd say, “She smells them sweet potatoes,” and I'd hide them. He’d say, “You ain’t no need of you hiding them.” She’d say, “I smell them.” I'd bring them out, and I'd give her sweet potatoes. She loved sweet potatoes. She died, and then we still lived here, and my kids, growed them up. They got educations. All of them finished high school but the baby boy. He didn’t like the teacher at Edneyville or something. One of them got into it, and he left school, didn’t finish, I guess about—I guess he lacked about a year finishing high school. He’s still paying for that, because when you go get a job, they want to know. Then my oldest son, he left about eighteen and joined the Navy, because he fell in love with this girl, and they were going to kill him. Instead of getting beat up, he took off and joined the Navy.

Interviewer:

Why were they going to kill him?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:55:00Because she was white. So he left and joined the Navy and finished twenty-something years in the Navy. My other son, he went and joined the Army. He’s still—he stayed in the Army and retired from the Army and still working with the Army. He went over in Iraq and stayed for a year when it was real, real bad, and everybody was praying for him. His name is James Avery. He stayed over there a year. And my daughter, she decided she was going to be a nurse. She worked in the plant for a while. She didn’t like that. She’d work a while and go to school and kept on going. She went over to the other side of Asheville over there and went to school. She’s an RN now, and she’s still a nurse. And my baby boy, if he got mad, he’d just walk off. He wouldn’t stay on a job. He’s working right now, so I thank God for that, my baby boy.

Interviewer:

Tell me about the plant.

Alma Avery:

0: 00:56:00The plant I worked in? Oh, Lord. It was pretty good and pretty bad.

Interviewer:

What was the name of it?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:57:00Alton Box. It was Alton Box, Textile Paper Plant and Jefferson Murphy. It went through three names.

Interviewer:

Where was it located?

Alma Avery:

0: 00:58:00Over at Mountain Home. Al Werly. I would hire people. They’d come in there. They didn’t know I couldn’t read. The supervisor would say, “I've got to go off, and I want you to take over while I'm gone.” I said, “I can’t read.” I'd been there about five years. He said, “You can’t read? You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?” I said, “No, I can’t read.” He said, “Well, if you can’t read, you give me your knowledge, and I'll give you my education. You take this paper, and you do whatever you do.” He went on off and come back, and I had everybody working. He said, “You got everybody wore out.” “What did you think I meant? What do you think I been watching you doing all the time?” Al Werly he came in about—I guess he was about eighteen. I trained him as a box boy. He was my box boy, and he wind up my supervisor, and then he wind up the plant manager. He just retired about I guess a year ago, maybe less than that. He got off and told me he had retired. I said, “You got to come and see me.” He said, “What about tomorrow?” I said, “Yeah, I'm having dinner tomorrow. Come and have dinner with us.” He came down, and we had a good time. Al Werly, he was good.

Interviewer:

Tell me more about what you did at the plant.

Alma Avery:

0: 00:59:00We made spools for thread, and a lot of the people would come in, and I'd train them. They were so mean. Some of them were so mean, some of them were so good, and some of them I won’t even tell about it. But still, I made it through. I'd come home and cry, go back the next day. Some of them would say, “I didn’t think you’d be back today.” I said, “Well, I'm here.” I'd get another load and come home and cry. The next day, go back to work again. But I made it for twenty-eight years.

Interviewer:

What was the most difficult part of the job?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:00:00It wasn’t the job. It wasn’t too bad. And the supervisors they all would say—some of them would get mad because I was real so good at what I did and couldn’t read and write. So they’d make up something and take me in the office. One of the plant managers, he said, “You brought her in here, but that ain’t the Alma Avery I know. There’s something going on, but that ain’t the Alma Avery I know.” And one of the girls finally said, “We made that up on her. She didn’t do that.” He said, “I knew she didn’t.” This girl, she said, “We made that up on her.” We’re still friends. I still know her.

Interviewer:

Tell me more about the black community here.

Alma Avery:

0: 01:01:00Well, ain’t been that many blacks here really. Just my husband and me and his mother and all. That’s just about all that was here. Then Miss Lucy and them, they own that place out there, and we bought this place here from—they bought that place out there that Mike owns out there now. They bought it from my mama, from Oscar’s mama. Mike and them live out there now, and they take care of us. I get sick or something, I don’t care if it’s midnight. I call them, and here they come.

Interviewer:

What kind of discrimination have you faced here growing up in the area?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:02:00Nothing really. Everybody has been good. This has been a good valley. Everybody has been really nice and good. We get along so good, just like one big family.

Female Speaker:

Wasn’t your husband the first black person with the Bat Cave Fire Department?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:03:00 Yeah.

Interviewer:

Tell me about that.

Alma Avery:

0: 01:04:00Well, we started—he start him and Red Anderson. They started the fire department down there. We’ve have cookouts and fish frys and everything. That’s the only time he could really move was when the fire alarm would go off. I said, “Boy, you act like you couldn’t do nothing the other day, but you moving now.” He’d put them boots on, and down the road he’d go when they had that fire. They had his funeral, and they had five fire trucks come from Hendersonville. It was the biggest funeral and the nicest funeral I ever been in in my life. I know it was a funeral, but it was really nice.

Interviewer:

How long was he a fireman?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:05:00Oh, Lord, I don’t know. About—

Female Speaker :

Wasn’t he one of the original founders? Wasn’t he one of the first firemen, the original group?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:06:00Yeah, I think about the second maybe.

Female Speaker:

He and Red Anderson founded the fire department.

Alma Avery:

0: 01:07:00 Yeah.

Female Speaker:

When was the Bat Cave Fire Department founded?

Alma Avery :

0: 01:08:00It was about—I guess about fifty-nine or sixty years ago really. I don’t want to say something that’s not so. But it’s back. I guess about fifty year ago.

Female Speaker:

He was a fireman until he died.

Interviewer:

I've got Jenny saying that. Can you say that? Just tell me about your husband founding the fire department with who they founded it with.

Alma Avery:

0: 01:09:00My husband, he was about one of the first fireman, him and Red Anderson. We’d cook fish, fish frys and everything. But he was always there at the fireman—at the fire department. He could move for that.

Interviewer:

How did he get to the fire department?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:10:00He had a truck.

Interviewer:

What was it like fighting fires in the old days?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:11:00Oh, he would go and fight fires when they have them, put out fires if a house would get on fire or whatever was needed. He was there.

Interviewer:

Before they had the—what the heck are they called?

Female Speaker:

Hydrants.

Interviewer:

Where did the water come from?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:12:00They’d go to the creek and get it, fill up the fire trucks with it out of the creek.

Female Speaker:

What’s that called, the piece of equipment that they’d pour—that they’d fill up with water? What’s the name of that? Pumper or—

Alma Avery:

0: 01:13:00Water hose or something.

Interviewer:

Must be some kind of pump that sucks the water up.

Alma Avery:

0: 01:14:00Yeah, pump it up.

Interviewer:

Tell me about the old days at Bat Cave. How has Bat Cave changed over the years?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:15:00It hasn’t changed too much. It’s just about the same.

Interviewer:

Bat Cave has stayed the same?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:16:00It stays about the same. Red and Alice and JC Huntman and all them were the fire department.

Interviewer:

What about the town itself in terms of the stores and the community?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:17:00The what?

Interviewer:

In terms of Bat Cave, the stores and the community and the town how have things—

Alma Avery:

0: 01:18:00We used to have a—Red Sullivan used to have a grocery store down there. But he moved off now. He’s down in Myrtle Beach, and we don’t have a grocery store in Bat Cave.

Interviewer:

The only thing in Bat Cave right now as far as I know is that stand, right? The food stand.

Alma Avery:

0: 01:19:00The Apple?

Interviewer:

Yeah, Apple. Tell me about your church.

Alma Avery:

0: 01:20:00My church? I love my church. We have the Temple of Jesus, name of the church. We go down there. I go down there. I used to go to Edneyville, but I know about as much as they know. We’d talk and have preaching and singing up there. I kind of got upset with them about something, and I started going to Lake Lure. I've been going to Lake Lure I guess about forty years.

Interviewer:

What church did you go to growing up?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:21:00We went to Nebo Baptist Church. We’d have to walk about eight-nine miles growing up. We’d go to Nebo, so we had a hundred years just last week. They celebrated their hundred years last week.

Interviewer:

Where are they located?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:22:00Down in Lake Lure. That’s where I was going when I met my husband. He came down and took me to church. We didn’t have to walk.

Interviewer:

What kind of role did the church play in the community if people had problems or their house burned down or people needed food?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:23:00Well, back then we didn’t have anybody that brought foodstuff, but here lately if they need stuff, they have it. But way back then, church, everybody was in the same boat trying to get something to eat.

Interviewer:

The people going to that church, where did they come from?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:24:00Just around the neighborhood.

Interviewer :

Did you have to walk the furthest to get to it?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:25:00Sometime we’d catch a walk, or maybe we wouldn’t get to go to church but once a year or twice a year. We’d go for homecomings. My daddy would always see that we go to go to the homecoming. We’d straighten our hair at night, and we’d have to straighten that stuff to get it straightened out, and we’d get ready to go to homecoming. Boy, we’d put on the best clothes that we could find that people had sent us, cut off the shoes that would fit us and wear them to the church.

Interviewer:

What else should I be asking?

Female Speaker:

I think that had to be really hard raising your children, working in a plant and doing all this farming and all the cooking that you do. How on earth did you do that every day?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:26:00I did it. I still can do it too. My supervisor up here—not my supervisor, up here, live up here. The other day he come down here and say, “I want to tell you, you're crazy.” I said, “You're telling me something I already know.” He said, “You're sick, and you ought to be looking out for yourself, and you're still in here cooking.” I said, “Yeah, Mike, I love to cook.” He said, “Yeah, but you’ve got blood clots in your leg, and you need to be laying down.” I said, “The Lord will take care of me. He always have, and he always will.” But he said, “You’re crazy.” I said, “I know I'm crazy, Mike,” and he just laugh at me. You wouldn’t believe all the canned stuff I've got in the house now. Chowchow. I got chowchow. I got hot chowchow, mild chowchow, red hot chowchow. I got soup, green beans, blackberry jelly, blueberry jelly, apple butter, everything.

Interviewer:

I'm getting hungry right now. (laughter)

Female Speaker:

What did you do for meat? I know you’ve got chickens. Did you have hogs and things like that?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:27:00We never had no hogs. Well, Daddy had hogs sometime. But we didn’t have no hogs.

Female Speaker:

But you raised chickens, right?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:28:00Yeah, I love chickens. I like chickens. I've got chickens.

Female Speaker:

Did you have a cow for the milk?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:29:00Way back when we was at home when I was growing up we had cows. But we never had no cows here.

Interviewer:

How did you get around besides walking?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:30:00That’s just about the way we did it. Wasn’t no other way to go except maybe somebody would come by and take us sometime.

Interviewer:

What did you do for entertainment?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:31:00 Huh?

Interviewer:

What did you do for entertainment?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:32:00Didn’t have none. Played, played with lids and buckets. I never could ride a bicycle. The rest of them could. I'd always fall off of it. After I got married, the kids would say, “Come on, Mama, you can ride the bicycle.” I got on it right up the road there, and the wheel went back on my leg. I said, “This is the last time,” and I ain’t been back on no bicycle, so I never rode a bicycle.

Interviewer:

Anybody in your family every play an instrument?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:33:00My daddy played the harp, and that’s about it.

Interviewer:

What kind of songs did he play?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:34:00I sing songs. I pick them up and sing them. Nobody can sing like I sing, but I sang.

Female Speaker:

Was that the old—did you use the old shake note singing, hymnals? You know what they call going by the notes, the old shake note singing?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:35:00Sometimes. I've got rubber boards. They used to take rubber boards and make music out of them and all, and I sang some. I sing at the church now.

Interviewer:

What’s your favorite song?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:36:00(singing) I believe—you want me to sing it?

Interviewer:

I do.

Alma Avery:

0: 01:37:00(singing) All that we need is Jesus. He satisfies. Joy is mine. Life would be worthless without him. All things in Jesus I find. Joy and happiness, every day I find. When I call him, he answers right on time. Oh, when my burden gets hard to bear, I go to him, and he answers my prayer. All things in Jesus I find.

Interviewer:

That’s beautiful. These days people go to the store when they want to get food. If they want to know about something, they pull out their electronic device and click around. What can you tell the next generation about—what do they have to learn from your life and the life of people who lived in your time?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:38:00They’d have to learn how to do with nothing. Just about do with nothing. Take a cabbage head and make it feed four or five people, and then take the juice and do the same thing at night, whatever. You need the bathroom, you have to go outside or up in the woods or whatever. You ain’t got this little soft paper you got here now. You got to get whatever you can get. If it’s leaves, it’s leaves. If there wasn’t leaves, it be a catalog or paper. This young generation don’t know it, but they’re going to have to know something. I just—I'm just really sad for this young generation if something was to happen and they had to really live. But I can make it one way or another. I get me some green grass out here and find out what’s the good and what’s the bad. But this young generation wouldn’t know nothing. They’d be sad. It would be sad.

Interviewer:

What would you like them to learn? What lessons would you like to teach them?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:39:00Just how to—how to live with less than what they’ve got and how to really trust God for most of the important things, because God will help them when nothing else would. If they get the Lord, get God in their life, He will tell them, He will show them, He would help them to come out of this. But if they don’t get the Lord, they’d be in a mess. They just couldn’t make it. They can’t make it. Seek Jesus first, and then they can make it. But if they don’t seek Jesus first, then this young generation is going to be in a—it just be hard. It just be bad.

Interviewer:

What legacy would you like to leave behind? What would you like people to remember about you?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:40:00Remember me?

Interviewer:

How would you like people to remember you?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:41:00Remember me as knowing that God will provide. And God will bring you out of anything if you trust him. But God is the only thing that this world really needs, and then he will supply your need.

Interviewer:

How would you like people to remember you in terms of the things you’ve done in life?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:42:00Just remember me as I am, because I am what I am. I don’t put on no airs. I don’t try to be something I ain’t. But I'm just what I am. And God has made me in the past several years what I am. The Holy Spirit is always there when you need him. I need him right now. I tell you, I'm holding on to him. I'm holding on. I'm holding on to him, because I've had cancer, and I've had cement in my back and cement across my hips. But I think sometime I think cement and stuff is gone, because the spirit of God has brought me out.

Interviewer:

In the world we live in today, everything is trucked in from somewhere else, food and everything we have to live our lives. What lessons have you learned in your life that helps make you self-reliant that others can learn?

Female Speaker:

In other words, if the power went off and all the food in that grocery store went bad, this younger generation couldn’t live. How would you tell them they need to live?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:43:00Oh, I'd tell them to get their electric lights, get them oil lights and have them already filled up, because I got three. They’re in the house. And when the power goes off, I light the electric lights. I've got electric now. I don’t have to have the wood and stuff. But I've got wood, and I've still got my wood heater if the power goes off, and then I make a fire. I don’t make a fire. Mike comes out and makes me fire for me. But get that oil stuff ready and have it in your lamps, because if you don’t, you're going to be sitting in the dark trying to find a way out and can’t.

Interviewer:

What if the trucks stopped coming delivering their food every two hours?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:44:00Well, open up that canned stuff you've got canned and putting back for the winter. And if somebody in the neighborhood don’t got none, find Alma Avery. She’ll help them. One time the Bat Cave Fire Department come up to see if I was all right. I was out on the porch cooking sausages and stuff. They come up and had food with me.

Interviewer:

Anything more you'd like to tell me that I didn’t—

Alma Avery:

0: 01:45:00Not right off. I'll probably think of some stuff later, but right now I don’t.

Interviewer:

Anything more you have to ask? Thank you so much for your time. That was wonderful. I really appreciate it. Do you have any old pictures and stuff I can include in the film, church pictures, old growing up pictures, anything like that?

Alma Avery:

0: 01:46:00Yeah, I have pictures.

Interviewer:

I'd love to make a copy of them and include that in the film if that’s okay. That was great. Thank you so much for your time.

0: 01:47:00(end of audio)