Thrisa Murphy

Partial Transcript: Thrisa introduces herself and gives a brief background. She talks about her family and how long they have been here, since 1768. She always loved the old stories.

Keywords: 1768; Family

Subjects: Thrisa Murphy

Partial Transcript: Thrisa talks about her grandparents. They lived sustainably, growing everything they could. They had cows, pigs, horses, ducks, milk cows, and chickens. They grew 95% of their own food. Thrisa can only remember them buying peanut butter and sliced bread, baking salt and sugar. Food was canned. They had a smokehouse. Everything they needed was on the farm. They made soap and lye. Thrisa explains how to make lye. There is a book called Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now about the family published in North Carolina.

Keywords: Wouldn’t Take Nothing for my Journey Now; canned; smoke house; sustainably

Subjects: grandparents

Partial Transcript: Thrisa talks about living with her grandparents. They went to bed before dark and got up before daylight. Thrisa talks about the chores they did every morning before breakfast. Breakfast was biscuits and gravy. Not sure what Grandpa was doing. Thrisa was 10 or 12 when she stayed in the summertime. There was a spring box and 2 refrigerators one inside and one outside. The only thing she kept in the refrigerator was milk.

Her grandmother had 7 boys. They all lived. After she had Junior they rolled her out in the hall in the hospital to die. She did not die and went on to have another set of twins.

Keywords: refrigerators; spring box; Grandparents

Subjects: summers on the farm

Partial Transcript: Thrisa talks about the advantages of these traditions. Thrisa says if there was a breakdown of society people could not take care of themselves. She feels that even with what she remembers from the farm she would be in trouble. She couldn’t kill a hog or chicken. She was there when her granny did these things but she was never taught to do them. She can grow food and can food. She relearned these skills after Eco Village came to her neighborhood and showed her the value of learning these skills. She knows only a few people who could survive if society broke down.

Keywords: Eco Village; breakdown of society; Traditions

Subjects: traditions

Partial Transcript: Thrisa explains that with television we have lost our sense of community. We don’t know who our neighbors are. In the old days, people relied on each other. She feels this is a huge loss. As a young girl, she would drive around and visit the old people and talk to them. No one does that anymore. People are just stuck in front of the TV. They are missing people. She didn’t realize this until Eco Village came to her neighborhood and she realized what it was like to have a close community.

Keywords: community; Eco Village

Subjects: community

Partial Transcript: Thrisa talks about The best pear she ever ate was one she ate out under the tree they had just picked it from. The best green beans she ever ate were just picked out of the garden. The closer to the dirt the better off you are says Thrisa. People are far removed from the sources of their food. People do not know where their food and clothes come from. Her granny made her husband's and her 7 sons' overalls from feed sacks. Thrisa feels making things yourself is very satisfying and buying things in your local community keeps the money in your local community. Thrisa talks about the benefits of supporting your local community.

Keywords: money; overalls

Subjects: buying local

Partial Transcript: Thrisa discusses What she thinks has gone wrong with our society. Busing kids out of the community and television has kept people in their homes so they don’t get out and talk to people.

Keywords: busing kids

Subjects: gone wrong

Partial Transcript: Thrisa answers the questions about the ability to grow more food these days. She agrees we are growing more food but we are using more chemicals. Thrisa talks about using chemicals to increase food production. She explains that there is technology out there that helps grow more food without poison. She wonders if the crops are better. Are they good for us even if there is abundance? Thrisa talks about the benefit of food being closer to home. She says it is nice to be able to eat a banana in February but food is more nutritious if it is grown closer to home. If it came from your neighbor you’re supporting your neighbor too.

Keywords: abundance; technology; chemicals

Subjects: supporting your neighbor.

Partial Transcript: Thrisa talks about Why this generation needs the connection to the wisdom of the ancestors. She feels it is a huge loss that people don’t hear the stories anymore. The school taught her that the wisdom of the ancestors was not important and that new science was more important.

Keywords: wisdom; ancestors

Subjects: connect with the wisdom

Partial Transcript: Thrisa explains that There is more joy in the challenge of living on your own. There is a joy of living with your neighbors and community. You learn to love or hate them. She has found a great deal of joy in knowing your neighbors and having interdependence with them rather than a grocery store. Thrisa feels that is why we are here and it has been degraded. Thrisa explains what she thinks is important in life. She feels we don’t take responsibility for ourselves anymore.

Keywords: challenge; interdependence; Joy

Subjects: Joy in life

Partial Transcript: Thrisa discusses how people can be more joyful by tapping elder wisdom and being mindful of who we are and how important we are to others. The stories give us hope and faith that we can do it because our ancestors did it. Thrisa explains that when she is having a hard time she gives herself the grandmother's speech. “We did this and this and this and you can too”. We don’t need all the artificial crap we have to live and to live happily and live together.

Keywords: elder wisdom; mindful; Joyful

Subjects: live more joyfully

Partial Transcript: Thrisa explains There is a happy medium between feeling pressure, dropping out, and getting drunk. We have to take responsibility for ourselves. Elder wisdom will give people a lot of help towards taking responsibility. Thrisa discusses how she thinks we can take responsibility. Start growing food and start taking care of ourselves. Start a barter community. Start building a community like there used to be in America.

Keywords: barter community; elder wisdom; responsibility; Happy medium

Subjects: responsibility

Partial Transcript: Thrisa explains how people lose their sense of self and community. It happens when they become isolated and not being in their community. By not being in the community they lose their sense of selves. Elder Wisdom puts you in touch with who you are and the land. Thrisa talks about what people need to do to stay healthy. She plants her crops according to the moon. That comes from thousands of years of history.

Keywords: Elder Wisdom; according to the moon; community

Subjects: sense of self

Partial Transcript: Thrisa shares Stories from her younger days. She talked about days on the farm when they would kill pigs. It was a hoot to have everyone together. She talks about her granny Murphy. You never left anyone’s house without a gift, usually homemade. Thrisa talks about how people feel about canned vegetables.

Keywords: botulism; granny Murphy; Stories

Subjects: Stories

Partial Transcript: Thrisa talks about the fact that History paints the male as being the pivotal point of the farm. She says that history was written by men. Men focus on men, not women. Farms could not run without women, feeding the kids, and all the other stuff. Women were healers. They were the providers at home. Women were so vital. Thrisa talks about how her granny managed with her twins. She feels that so much history was lost when the European men came here and recorded history. We have had to relearn everything. The knowledge was gone because the women were gone and nothing was ever recorded.

Keywords: European men; healers; men

Subjects: pivotal part of the homestead.

Partial Transcript: Thrisa returns to Sharing stories. She talks about her aunt Lenny and that during the depression when there was a Homecoming at church people came from all over. They still have Homecomings today. She would save sugar for months and months to make a cake. Her aunt Lenny was tough. There were rouges that followed the Homecomings for the food. A few took her cake out back to eat it. Aunt Lenny went out and took it back; no one was eating that cake. Thrisa talks more about her aunt Lenny. She was a nurse who shared her stories with Thrisa about WWII. Lenny’s daddy had a legal liquor still.

Keywords: Depression; Homecoming; liquor still; Aunt Lenny

Subjects: Aunt Lenny

Partial Transcript: Thrisa shares a story that Ray Kirsten told her. His grandpa made legal liquor for the government because, after the Civil War, there were no distilleries left. Thrisa explains the process the government used to check the stills and the liquor. The sugar content was checked, by a gager, the bung was stamped and the liquor was sold. That would be the end of the bung. There was a man in Asheville who would resell the bung which was not legal. Thrisa talks about her great uncle and his involvement with stills. After his run-in with the revenuers he moved to Texas and became a big builder, he became known as J.S Murphy

There are many stories like that. Her grandpa made liquor and her granny hated it. But if they hadn’t made liquor during the depression they would have starved.

Keywords: Civil War; Texas; bung; gager; government; resell; revenuers; tax; Legal liquor

Subjects: Legal stills and illegal transactions

Partial Transcript: Thrisa talks about her grandpa Julius Elliot who went off to the coal mines of Beckley Virginia because there was no work around here. He came with $600 and bought a farm on his ancestral land. He made white liquor because things were still depressed in that area. They would have starved if they had not made the white liquor. When Thrisa was a kid there was always white liquor in the freezer. When they drank in the backyard she was sent inside. Thrisa tells how the white liquor was accessed from the attic. They were never caught by Sheriff Lawrence Brown.

Keywords: Sheriff Lawrence Brown; ancestral land; white liquor; Beckley Virginia

Subjects: White liquor

Partial Transcript: Thrisa talks about the day the Federal Revenuers came in. They parked at the bottom of Rosie Branch but all the white liquor makers were gone. Her grandpa had seen the car parked there and he went around back and told the white liquor makers to get out of there. He was charged with aiding and abetting in 1932. They took him to the jail in Buncombe County. His brothers bailed him out and he was on probation for a year.

Some of the stills are still there and some of the furnaces and the rocks are piled up. It was made close to the creek.

Nells Dotson told her stories of how they would run liquor using an old model A Ford. It sold for $1 a pint and $2 a pint in the logging camps. They made a good living. Thrisa explains how the transactions were made.

She is probably the first person in her family who doesn’t make white liquor or even know how.

Keywords: Rosie Branch; model A Ford; white liquor makers; Federal Revenuers

Subjects: grandpa Julius Elliot

Partial Transcript: Thrisa explains Why it is important to remember our history. She says history tells us where we need to go and tells us where we came from and gives us our roots. It gives us a basis. Everything that has happened in history has happened before and will happen again. The truth is important not what modern media says it was like.

Keywords: where we came from; roots

Subjects: remember history

Partial Transcript: Thrisa’s ancestors didn’t just come here and build a house in the forest. There was a lot going on. During the revolution, if you were in one county with your guy and the local sheriff was a Tory and you weren’t, your house could be burnt down.

There was a lot going on. There was a lot of political pressure, inter-community pressure, a lot going on. It wasn’t just about surviving off the land it was about surviving the politics going on in your area.

Keywords: political pressure; Tory

Subjects: a lot more going on

Partial Transcript: Thrisa talks about how best to go about learning the old ways. You have to sit down and talk to older people. She wishes she had sat down and listened to her grandparents more. So many people had passed by the time she caught the bug about family history.

Her great grandma Aunt Excer, Thrisa explains how she was her grandma and aunt and kept a great garden. Everything she did she was the best at. She canned and did everything and Thrisa wishes she had sat down and talked to her.

Keywords: tomatoes; older people

Subjects: the old ways