Jimmie Huntley

Partial Transcript: My name is Jimmie Huntley and my grandma raised me with her family. She had 10 children of her own. My mother lived in New York city 50 years. Then she came back down here and that’s where she passed away. I have one half-sister and she lives in Florida. Which I don’t ever see.
All my uncles are dead but John Jay.

Partial Transcript: Well, when I was going to school at where the clinic used to be. I had to walk a mile to catch a bus. Bob Messer drove the bus. We’d go down there to the elementary school at Bat Cave. When I got through the 6th grade, we went to Edneyville (?) and I finished school there through the 12th grade.

Partial Transcript: Well up here at the elementary school we had… one teacher was Ms. Shook. I remember her in the 1st grade. (chuckle) Then Ms Yearn taught me up through the 6th grade. Then I transferred to Edneyville where I went to high school. I finished school in 1947.

2:04 Was it a one room school house? Or did it have more than one room?

Up here? no it had more than one room. When they closed the school down Dr. Bahn, it’s where he placed his clinic in the school house up there. Course it’s gone now. I don t know what happened to it. But we thoroughly enjoyed it.

2:28 What was your favorite subject?

Oh Lordy, History, I guess.

Partial Transcript: Well I never did know my father. My mother, her name was Lillian (?) Bethel Huntley. She was named after the first woman lawyer in New York. My grandfather named all his children after famous people. George was George Washington Huntley, John Jay Huntley, Thomas Roosevelt, Wade Hampton. My mother was Lillian Bethel. Her sister was Charlotte and one Mollie Montgomery and Katherine, Nancy Katherine, named after her mother. That was her name, Nancy Huntley.

3:47 What kind of work did she do? Your Mother?

She worked with RCA in New York. They made records you know. When they moved to New Jersey, she didn’t want to go to New Jersey so she quit. She became a beautician.

Partial Transcript: I never did know my grandfather. He was killed in an accident the year before I was born. My grandmother – she was a wonderful woman. Her father was a Civil War veteran. She was a Williams until she married my grandfather, Jessie Huntley. She was a fine woman, she had to, to put up with me.

4:54 Tell me what she would do around the house. Did she grow food? Did she have a garden?

Oh yah, we raised our food. Had a garden. Raised corn. Had a couple of cows. I remember, we had a barn out there and we’d go out there and play in the loft, you know.
Grandpa had 70 acres over there at the home place. Over where I live on High Falls Road, he had 200 and some acres over there. So, he was a go-getter. If he hadn’t of gotten killed, he probably would’ve been wealthy. But my grandma was a good ol’ woman. She was a tall woman. And my grandfather was a short man, so Uncle Wade and George took after him. While John and Ted took after their mother, they were tall. John Jay is the only one left alive.

Partial Transcript: Oh, Lord. We got up and eat breakfast. We had an old wood cook stove. We’d eat our breakfast and get out and do whatever needed to be done around the house. My job. You know how the youngest person always gets the worst job? OH, we all did about the same. But it was a good home. My uncles were good people.
We worked in the garden. I had to milk to cow. And then we had a field down below the house. We raised corn – hickory cane corn, by the way. That’s about it, we just did whatever we had to do.
My grandma canned food. Corn, beans. We used to raise that _____ corn. It was a good corn. Grandma, she was real good at it.

Partial Transcript: We didn’t. We didn’t have no refrigerator. That’s why we canned it. We had a smokehouse. We’d kill a hog and put it in the smokehouse.
Let me tell you this story. I remember one time we were killing a hog. We had a 50-gallon barrel and we were scalding him in the 50-gallon barrel. Ted had been in trouble at some time… and the law came up. So him and Edward Huntley run down through the field, jumped the barbed-wire fence and was gone.

Partial Transcript: Making liquor. He had a still. I remember cause I used to go where it was at and it was a steamer, he called it. He had a 50-gallon barrel with water in it. He’d heat the water and it’d turn into steam and go into the other barrel with steam. Where the beer was at, it come out and go through the worm and turn into liquor.
Who used to buy the liquor?
Oh anybody he could sell it too.
Do you know how much he produced?
No, Lord, I was just a young boy.
Did he ever get caught?
Twice. He got caught one time but Uncle Buck got him out of it. Buck had a lot of influence. He didn’t spend any time in jail. Uncle Buck got him out of it. The law had a lot of respect for Uncle Buck, William. He was… they had a man in Hendersonville one time, he had killed someone, and he told them if they’d come up there he’d shoot him. But he said if you sent Buck Huntley up here, then I’ll turn myself into him. And they did.
When I was a boy he was a fisherman. He had an automatic reel. He’d fish for trout in the river. Then he became a coon hunter, then a bear hunter. We used to go up on coal mountain bear hunting, when I was a young man. But I’d get tired trying to follow them dogs on the side of the mountain, and I gave it up. *chuckle* But Buck could do anything. He was a land surveyor. He could do anything. He was a fine man.

Partial Transcript: Henry Hill told me one time, he woke up that night and looked out through the window and a flash of lightening, he saw the earth looked like it just opened up and the water gushed out. It washed part of his house away with three of his children. His youngest daughter Stacy was 16, she died, but his other two survived. But grandma told me that it just rained for days and days. And I guess the ground just got to where it wouldn’t hold the water.

Did it wash the house down?

Not our house. Did some people’s.

It washed everything away down through Middlefork. There was a few houses that didn’t wash away.

13:35 Do you know how those were protected from the water? Particular locations that were safer?

Well they were a little higher, you see. So when the water came down through the creek, it didn’t wash them away. I don’t know if it washed the old school house away or not. It did a lot of damage.
Uncle Edgar, B.E. Huntley, gave the church a quarter of an acre and that’s where they built the church when we had gotten out.
One grandma told me, the flood was awful. Lot of people lost their homes, you know. There was one place up there – they had a picture of where W.A Prior and Aunt Edna… they lived in the old house. It’s a barn now. But they lived there and it didn’t wash away. The old barn is still there, yah.

Partial Transcript: Well there’s a man that lived above the cemetery, up where the home place is. His name was Tine Cox. Their house was built all of Chestnut. He said when they saw the holly hocks floating by the window, he knew it was time to leave. They left the house – it didn’t wash away – but they came down to my grandfathers, stayed with them.

Partial Transcript: Oh yes, probably so. Best thing to do is not build ‘em down next to the creek.

Partial Transcript: Well the Rocky Broad River came up out of its banks. I think the way things have gone now they’ve learned how to build and where to build. Where if something happens they don’t have the problems they used to. People don’t live down near the river anymore.

There were 300 mudslides and landslides. Those days there weren’t many people living up on the ridges.
See back years before the flood, people farmed the sides of these mountains. But now they’ve grown them up in timber, so they don’t have no trouble washing away anymore. But back when they farmed it, grandma said it rained for days and the land just washed away. So, people have learned some good lessons.

Partial Transcript: When I was a boy, I use dot have what’s called a card class. Aunt Edna Prior taught me in the card class. I was just a little boy. In 1947, Uncle Buck came over to Middlefork to run a revival. There were 40 people converted in that revival – course he could preach. A lot of them were…
All the soldiers that were there during the war. Not a one of them was killed during the war, those from Middlefork. Sam Prior was a Navy Pilot. His brother Dan was a navigator on a bomber. They all retired but I guess they’re all dead now too. They were both school teachers before they went into the service.
B. E. Huntley, Uncle Edgar we called him, his wife and two children were washed away. He grabbed onto a tree and saved his life but he couldn’t save them. They found them the next day down Middlefork Creek. They were dead. He went to Indiana and worked on a cattle ranch for a while and then he came back. He was my grandfather’s full brother.
My great-grandfather was William Francis Huntley. He had five sons and two daughters. Far as the flood is concerned…. Grandma told me about Henry Hill over there and his family being washed away, but I really don’t know that much about it, see.
There was a school house up there, before you get up tot eh church on the right, but down through there they just washed away.

Partial Transcript: My mother was the oldest daughter. Uncle Buck was the oldest son, William called Buck. Roosevelt, Aunt Enda used to call him Rooosevelt, Thomas Roosevelt. And then John Jay, George Washington and then the daughters, you know. One of them, Charlotte, married a Baptist pastor. Katherine married a guy in California.
Wade married uh…. died this year. We were having a singing school. He used to run a singing school so people could learn to sing and read shape notes. A singing director came over from Nashville and he taught us the notes and how to read the music. That’s when I first learned how to sing and read the notes. I can still read the notes and sing.

Partial Transcript: Well regular notes they’re round, you know. But shape notes. The Do note is shaped like a triangle. Re note is round on the bottom. Mi is like a diamond. Fa is like a sharp angle. So is round. La is … and Ti is like this with this coming out like that. Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do
*Sings Do Ti La So Fa Mi Re Do*

Partial Transcript: Well one of them was… Ted, he was the moonshiner. One time Sammy Huntley, during the war Ted was in the Army in Europe. Sammy Huntley got caught the first time. Him and Ted was making liquor and Ted had a 25-gallon keg of liquor on his should and the law jumped out and he dropped the liquor. But Buck got him out of that. He didn’t have to go to jail or nothing. But anyhow, Sammy went down to Mexico during the war, so he’d married and come in and up where I’m living now. There was an old log house up there and he set up a steel and was making liquor. Sheriff told Buck, he said you tell him to quit making liquor or I’m gonna come and get him. And Ted said, Well, to hell with him. That was the language he used back then *chuckle* before he went to preachin’. They came in that night and caught him. He had 25 50-gallon barrels of liquor ready to run off… beer ready to run off. The law bursted the barrel you know. Took him into town and Buck got him out of that.
Ted became a preacher. Yah. Buck run a revival in Middlefork church in 1947 and Ted came down to church one night and got saved. He became a preacher. He preached in Tennessee for 38 years.
I guess he stopped making liquor at that point.
Oh yah, those days were over. *chuckle* oh, Lord, those where the days.

Partial Transcript: Yah, you see back then most of the people farmed. There wasn’t much else for them to do. When I was young man, we used to cut tan bark, peel tan bark. Tan bark is made from Chestnut oak. They take tan bark and they’d take it over to Canton to the paper factory over there. They used it over there. We’d cut the tree and peel the bark off and used the bark to tan things.