Sheila Walsh

Partial Transcript: Hello, my name is Sheila Walsh. Used to be Huntley. Born and raised here. Spent about 8 years in Ohio, but other than that I’m back here and its where I intend to stay. Got two kids of my own.

Partial Transcript: Wow. As far as I can remember. The stories are that 3 brothers came over from Scotland. One settled around here, one settled down toward the Rutherfordton / Shelby area, and the other one went north. So probably the early 1700’s mid-1700’s. Something like that.

Partial Transcript: Oh gosh, I can’t remember too far back. I can go back probably as far as my great-grandmother, my great-great-grandfather. But that’s as far as I can remember without looking at any... So, my Dad, his mother was Lillian, her mother was Nancy, her father was William Columbus. And on the father’s side, Jesse, and I have no idea what his father’s name was so that’s about as far as I can remember.

Partial Transcript: As far as I know, probably farmers, hunters. Yah, there wasn’t much to do back then.

Partial Transcript: It was good. I mean, I was born in ’61 so that’s still a different time then now, that’s for sure. When I was little we lived with grandma in her house, while Mom and Dad were building theirs across the road. We had the garden, so we still were growing our own food – as well as the grocery store. But I remember watching grandma still churning butter in the churn. Those sort of things. You know, doing a lot of things by hand, making your biscuits, and canning your food. I never got into the whole hunting thing. I do remember watching them skin it, and kill it, and doing some of that too. Going out and hunting your own food and fixin’ it.

Partial Transcript: Well, we’re going to get back into the same situation. My grandmother - of course - was not around. She was in New York. She came usually once or twice a year and visited. So I called her Grandma Curtis because that was her last name. My great-grandmother was “Grandma” – she was the one that was around all the time. So, she was the one that was there that showed me how to crochet and taught me some of those things like that that you get to do. She was a good lady. Raised all those kids by herself and kept the family together. It was cool.

Partial Transcript: It gives you that sense of history, sense of family… continuity. I try to do that with my kids some to remind them of those things in history like that. This is where we came from. Trying to keep some of those old skills alive, like canning, and doing some things like that - that none of us do anymore, even me. I don’t do it so much anymore; I did 10 years ago but not anymore. We tend to forget… We’re so technological now, that’s all there is almost. Even people just from mine and Shirley’s age, on Sunday evening going to a friend’s house sittin down, havin’ dinner and just going visiting… that doesn’t happen that often that often anymore either. Which is a shame that that’s being lost… and just being there for each other.

Partial Transcript: Aunt Edna, I remember her as a child because she was always around… ever since I was a baby. I do remember her more so from church because we’d pick her up on Sunday mornings and we’d all go to church together. She was older. As a child, I thought she was old, but she probably really wasn’t. hahaha. She was probably in her 40’s or 50’s, who knows. I know she was a godly woman, she cared about people. She raised a bunch of kids too. Later on, after her son moved back into the homeplace there, and they were all together, we would go down and help shuck corn or do beans and do some things like that together. But that’s pretty much all I remember with her, because then she got sick and of course, passed on, so.

Partial Transcript: Probably a lot of the same things you’ve already heard. Uncle Edgar and the house washing away when he stepped out onto the porch. And it hit the house and took the daughter and the kids and the wife and he survived. The two children that were washed down the river and died, I don’t remember the name of that family. Talking about how Grandma and Grandpa’s house, how it wasn’t affected - it was up on a hill. And everybody’s like, ‘That’s where we need to be because nothing’s going to bother us there’ because he built up on a hill instead of down by the creek. That is pretty much all that I can recall about that - that I can remember hearing. Those were the main ones that made an impact on people. Other than it raining for days and the mountain looking like it was busting open and water pouring out.

Partial Transcript: I would like to say yes, but probably not. We still have everybody building their houses on the river where it can flood. I mean, that’s the biggie right there. It doesn’t take much for the river to get big enough to wash some things away.

Partial Transcript: Well where we live on the mountain, it’s the same thing. I’m up on top so flooding doesn’t bother us as much up there. But as we went down the mountain you could see where it had washed bridges away, and it dug out the cement and the asphalt. And the further down the mountain we got, down at Miss Ollie Huntley’s, that whole mountain slid off and was blocking the road. Behind her house, it had slid off and come into her house, and above her house, there was another small slide. So we were stuck on the mountain – there was no getting off because that was a huge landslide. But once we – we did go on down the road, I think we might have walked around it. We walked all the way down to see what had happened. Down at the bottom of Middlefork and what we called the Rast curve – that first deep curve – the road was gone there – totally gone. We didn’t get down to Chimney Rock because the road was closed. It was bad down through there. I saw the after-effects of that because we had a deep gorge near the house, and my husband, at the time, he told them that they could dump all their debris there – DOT – so we filled in the gorge with the debris from Lake Lure and that’s where my lower yard is now. Huge rocks and trees and it was enough to fill up a very deep area and make about a half an acre. So, yah, I do remember that.

Partial Transcript: From what I recall it was 14 or 15 inches in 4 hours or something like that. It was a lot of rain. Lot of rain.

Partial Transcript: I don’t recall any tragedies. And the only thing I can recall is down through Chimney Rock, I know, Dunkins Barbeque got washed away. I think there might have been some others ones that might have had some damage like that – but I’m not positive cause like I said, we were kind of stuck on the mountain and couldn’t get off.

Partial Transcript: Because it is our history, it's where we came from and what has made us who we are. And once things like that are lost you’re not going to get them back. So if we don’t keep that alive with our kids, by the time they have kids it's going to be forgotten. And I think that’s a shame. Think of where we came from and the people in the Appalachians, a lot of the songs and the music, that came over from Scotland – if those things get passed down and if you don’t pass them down it's gonna be forgotten and I don’t think that should happen.

Partial Transcript: You lose that connection with your past and where you came from. And what has made your family what it is down through the years, and all, it all kind of adds up. And there is more to life than your cell phone or your xbox.