We thank Ted Carter of the Asheville Times, Asheville, North
Carolina for permission to use the following article. Also thanks
to Jim Ledbetter, 108 Sunset Drive, Black Mountain, North Carolina
28711 for his interest in getting this to the readers.
October is hospitality month in the mountains. Nobody proclaimed
it. Folks just feel that way during the harvest season.
Its the month of glowing colors, heavy hued and gaudy; the month
of yellow pumpkins piled in the fields or in barn lots, or even
along the highways; the month of the last summer blossoms (pioneers
called them ‘purties’) the regal hardy hydrangeas, the
fragile blooms of obelia, the dogwood’s red berries. It’s
the last little growth of the fine grass in the shade of the big
lawn trees, the last little growth of the ivy. Doves strut around
over the grass picking up tiny seedlings, growing fat and
friendly.
It’s blue skies and white clouds over blue ridges and the
earth so clean around us, the air so fresh and fragrant the year at
its fruition.
The air is cooler in the mornings as the winds sweep out of the
uplands, growing colder daily, wisping the smoke from the chimneys,
the good wood smoke from the fireplace, the warming fires of
autumn.
October is for recalling the days of past years when folks were
close to the seasons, the days of rural living. Harvests were grand
in the mountains, matching the season.
Gone are the days of rolling wheat fields, covering much of the
uplands, all the way to the ridge tops in among the orchards. Gone
are the days of the corn shocks and barn lofts bulging with new
mown hay, still so sweet from the meadows.
Neighbors were close then, helping with the labors,
‘swapping work’ with each other.
Remember the wheat harvests the rippling wheat covering the
fields, ready for the cutting? Remember the reapers who appeared
one day big, sweaty, wholesome men; carrying along their
‘cradles.’ They were soon at their labors in the field,
sweeping steadily onward with powerful sweeps of their sharp
blades. The wheat sliced off in bundles. Somebody followed along
behind, to tie it all up neatly, piling the sheaves in neat little
stacks, but leaving some for the gleaners.
Remember, too, on another day how the threshing machine rolled
down the road, hulking and cumbersome, pulled along by straining
mules, at the ‘gees’ and ‘haws’ of the
skinners?
They pulled into the wheat field and set up there for business.
Remember the big stack of the boiler, with the heavy smoke pouring
out, the towering frame of the threshing machine and the big wide
belt that joined them, always crossed in the middle? Remember dust
and the chaff of the action with all its roaring racket, the
whining sound of the fly wheel, the men all tossing bundles and
stacking sacks of the precious wheat?
Remember the great long tables, covered with checked cloths, set
for the men out under the trees in the yard by the back door stoop?
The tables were loaded down with their dinner great stacks of
biscuits, sugar cured hams, chicken baked in the oven, then fried
to a delicate crisp. There were steaks drowned in gravy, bowls
piled high with green beans seasoned with side meat and cooked with
little potatoes, round molds of butter, cabbage cooked with ham
hocks, bowls of golden corn, honey, james and jellies, peach pies
and fruit cakes with six or seven layers (apple sauce between them)
food for hearty workers.
Hog killing time in the mountains called for other gatherings.
Huge barrels were sunk into the ground near the hog pens barrels
full of water. Early one frosty morning the neighbors gathered,
stomping around a big bonfire where stones were heated, then thrown
in the barrels heating the water for scalding. The hog was killed,
all the men lifted the carcass and dipped it in the barrel, then
hung it head-down on the limb of a tree where it was scraped and
gutted. An expert did the butchering, cutting the meat up properly.
The lard was stored in big tin cans and the entrails were properly
buried. They salted the meat in the meat house and ground the
scraps for sausage. There was big action in the farm kitchen,
cooking all those breakfasts stacks of wheat cakes drowned in
sorghum, dozens of eggs fried sunny side up or scrambled eggs with
brains, platters of bacon and sausages, hash brown potatoes, plenty
of fresh butter, and pans full of hot biscuits, taken fresh from
the oven and coffee by the gallons.
October was friendship month, for helping all the neighbors.
Folks meant it when they said, ‘Light and rest a spell.’ Or
when they added, ‘We don’t have much, but what we have,
you’re welcome to.’ They weren’t talking about their
kitchens. They ate sumptuously. Nobody ever went hungry in the
mountains in the autumn.
