BEING A JOINES:
A LIFE IN THE BRUSHY MOUNTAINS
Jointly produced by Tom Davenport Films and the Curriculum in Folklore
of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Transcription
Copyright © 1981 by Daniel W. Patterson
All rights reserved
Published by the Curriculum in Folklore
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Transcription of the Sound Track with Commentary
(Numerals in parentheses denote the footage count for the analog
video, starting from the "beep" or from numeral two on the academy
leader, with time conversion calculated at thirty-three feet to the minute,
followed by elapsed time in minutes:seconds with time conversion calculated
at 24fps for the streamed video.)
CRAWL TITLES: John Elree Joines, a gifted tale teller, grew up in the Brushy
Mountains of western North Carolina. Here the early American backwoods life
lingered until nearly the Second World War. "Frail" Joines's experiences
and stories give a glimpse of the traditional Appalachian community and of
the changes that in a single generation have swept it away.
***
FRAIL: Right there's and right there. And there's one on the back of that finger, and
that finger's stiff. A 'possum bit me one time right in the joint there, just
stuck a tooth in there and one there and about three drops of blood run out.
And it set up infection and my whole hand just rotted out in there, and the
doctor lanced it. He first lanced it there and there, and then he had to lance
it down here. And you could just see all the leaders in my hand, it just all
. . . And it stunk like a dead horse. You couldn't hardly stand to be around
me. Then my brother, when I was right little, he chopped the end of that one
off with the ax. The hog got out and I run from the hog up on the woodpile,
and he was up there chopping around with the ax, and I stuck my hand under
where he was chopping and he whacked the end of that finger off. Put them
even and you can see how much he got of it. And then . . . That's a wart right
there on that hand, just an old wart that come up there a few year ago. And
that little scar there, I got that in the Army, that was the only one I got
in the Army. And outside of that, I reckon that about covers the scars on
my hands.
DAVENPORT: What about your neck?
FRAIL: I got a little scar right there. And the end of my nose has been cut
off. One on my tongue. I bit it. And got one on my leg there where my brother
with a shotgun. Shot the calf of my leg off. Got . . . They's some
shot in my leg yet. They's two right along there and there's one right in
there and there's three or four worked up to the top. There's a little one
there where a guy cut me -- pocket knife. That about covers the scars, I reckon.
I told some of them, they wanted to know how I got so many scars when I came
out of the Army, and I told them that ; got me the scars. I told them going through war was just like
going to
(83; 2:18)
***
FRAIL: . . . go with me. That's a "beetle" [pun on "beagle"]
dog. Plott, or something or 'nother.
***
FRAIL: Well, I was borned in the year 19 and 14, the seventh day of August.
[Photograph A] When I was about six or seven year old, my daddy'd put me to
plowing with a big team of horses, and logging. Hed' take me out of school
to log in the wintertime. He'd take contracts a-logging. And I drove the team.
[Photograph B] I was the team boy. He was a good hand when I was a-growing
up -- all of us kids [Photograph C] was little -- he was a good hand to get
around and push us and get a great big crop put out. And then he'd either
get hooked up and start making liquor, or And it was left up to me to whip the other kids -- and two
or three of them older than I was -- and make them work and work this crop
out. We'd work all day and my mother'd work in the field, and cry, you know,
with a bunch of kids. And then he'd come in and cuss her and accuse her of
talking to other men and beat her up. Till us kids got big enough to fight
him. And I'd, I'd . . . After I got up any size he was afraid to try it because
he knew I'd take a stick and knock him in the head if he jumped on my mother,
you know. I used to hate him. I hated him when I was little. I didn't hate
him so bad when he wasn't drunk, but I could see him drunk, and I could tell.
I could see him a mile and a half away and I could tell when he was drinking,
because he had a way of spreading his fingers just as wide as he could get
them and slinging his hands when he was drinking. And he had a . . . You could
look at him and you could tell, because he had his fingers spread just as
wide as he could. And I could see them, and I'd get so mad I'd just see red
almost, when I was a little bitty kid, I mean just a little bitty thing.
(151; 4:11)
***
FRAIL: [To horse] Gee, whoa, whoa. Now you're not looking where you're a-going,
honey. Gee, baby. Come on.
***
FRAIL: I . . . the same type of person as any of my brothers. None of
the rest liked to do the things I did. You see, I liked animals, I liked to
hunt, I loved to plow, I loved to work animals. I'd break every little old
heifer calf I had to work, you know. I'd take them out and log with them.
[Photograph E] Make little old yokes and have two of them teamed up, had the
milk cows, a-working them. My mother'd quarrel at me, you know, and all such
stuff as that. That was my life -- was animals. [Photograph F] And my brothers
and sisters, I whipped every one of them a whole lot more than my daddy did,
and made them work. I had to stay right after them. I used to whip my brother,
and him four year older than I was, and make him hoe corn, you know. He'd
get mad and was gonna quit. I'd give him a whipping, make him work. And that
was my responsibility to see that every -- at least, I thought it was. Until
I got up about thirteen year old and then he run me away from home, you see.
I didn't live with my daddy after I was thirteen.
(190; 5:16)
***
FRAIL: when he got drunk -- I mean just plumb, floppy drunk,
you know. He could walk -- you never seen him so drunk but what he'd walk
-- but he'd just be wild drunk, you know, he'd want to pray for you. He wanted
to pray for you. And I wouldn't let him pray for me. I told him that was making
a mock of God and I didn't believe in no such junk as that. But he always,
when he got drunk and got around me, "Shon, can I pray f or you?"
-- called me shon instead of son, you know -- "Shon, can I pray for you?"
And one day I come down the mountain below home there and Clyde Canter lived
down there at that --where that Minnie Fraser lives. And I come down by and
it was getting down almost dark, and wintertime, just as cold as it could
be. The ground was froze pretty good and ice froze along the creek bank. Well,
down there at the ford . . . We had a ford across where we drove the wagon
across and it'd wash out, come a rain and wash it out, and we'd pile rocks
across below it and lay plank on it. We'd walk across there sometime. We had
a foot log about twelve foot high on down below there and a path went straight
over to the house. But he was drunk and I knew he'd fall off that old tall
foot log. And, so I just took him out by that ford. Well, they'd piled in
there, and there's a hole of water there just about three foot deep and about
fourteen or fifteen foot wide, you know, and plank laying across on the rock
below. And I said, "You'd better let me hold you up across these rocks
here. You'll fall in." "Aw," he says, "you think I'm drunk,
don't you?" And he'd asked me could he pray for me, and I told him no.
So, he said, "Well, I'll tell you what, you think the Lord ain't with
me." He said, "You get on over there out of the way," and he
said, "if the Lord's with me, he'll hold me up," and said, "if
he ain't with me, he'll let me fall in." Well, I just went on across
the creek and got out, I guess, fifty foot from the creek and turned around
and watched him. He backed up a time or two and staggered around, made him
a sight, you know, at them plank, and he made a running go and he got about
halfway across the creek, right in he went plumb out of sight in that water.
And he come up, you know, a-blowing and hollering, "Hooo, hooo,"
and he come out of there, and he was just a-shaking all over, you know. And
just about 200 yards on up to his house, where he lived -- I didn't live with
him then -- and got nearly to the house, he looked over at me and he said,
"I'd a-made her, but," said, "damn you, you shoved me."
***
FRAIL: [Photograph G] I felt a sadness, not so much -- he went through
life and wasted his life. He had plenty of sense -- that a man could go through
life and not have no more real tears shed over him than was shed at his funeral.
[Photograph H] lived up 'til just a few year ago. I don't believe she ever
hated him, just really hated him. I think there was a place there in her that
she always liked him in a way.
***
(290; 8:03)
NOISE OF LIVESTOCK MARKET
FRAIL: And then, about the time Jim and Fleet was catching the calves,
you know, and the calf run over Jim and knocked him cold, and you was going
to pray for him and you said, "Now I lay me down to sleep."
FLEET BROCK: says, "shoot this rabbit," and he jumped
the ditch and Jim shot him. The gun was loaded that time -- shot him in the
calf of the leg. You remember that, don't you, Fraley?
FRAIL: {pulling up pants leg to show scar] Yeah, I remember.
***
(339; 9:25)
FRAIL: one time, one of these girls, said, "You've got the
longest tongue of any man I've ever seen in my life." I says, "It
ain't no wonder," and I showed her that scar on my tongue and I said,
"They cut the end of my tongue off when I was little and put a piece
of woman's tongue on it," and I said, "I ain't never been able to
control it." And I said, "There ain't no man can control a woman's
tongue." And went to one place one time and an old girl whispered over
to some of the rest of them, and I heard her, said, "I don't know who
he is, but if I knew him, I bet I could out-talk him." And I said, "Well,
I'm not hard to get acquainted with, but I don't believe you could outtalk
me." So, we talked to each other about two hours and she was a-holding
me a pretty good light, but she had large feet, you know, for a woman her
size. I finally looked over at her, and I said, "You'd a been real tall
if they hadn't hit so high up on your leg when they started to break your
ankle and doubled so much of you down for foot." And that got the best
of her, and when I got her to going I never let her stop then the rest of
the night. And it wasn't a week 'til that was all over the country up around
Traphill and up in there. Everybody I'd see, "Well, boy, if you outtalked
that woman I want you to come to our party. I want you to come up when we're
going to have a get-together and music or something or other, you know. If
you can outtalk that woman -- we've never seen nobody can hold her a light."
(380; 10:33)
[Photograph I]
MUSIC (Charlie Poole and the N.C. Ramblers)
[Photograph J]
***
(392; 10:53)
FRAIL: on bein' strong, you know, and he had an old mill
rock that weighed about six or seven hundred pound. And ever Christmas he'd
get him a gallon of brandy, and he'd take him a drink or two of that brandy
and he'd go out there and get that mill rock. He'd get it and stick it up
over his head like that, you know, and lay it back down. Well, this winter'd
been extra cold, been a lot of rain and cold weather and the ground had froze
pretty bad, you know. And so Christ-mas come, he got him a gallon of brandy,
and went in and took a few drinks, went out there and got a-hold of his mill
rock and he couldn't move it. He goes back in and he sets there a little bit
and drinks two or three more drinks, and he tried again and he couldn't move
it. Went back and set down and was setting there looking so bad, and my grandmother
passed and she said, "Honey, what's the matter with you," said,
"you look bad." Said, "Are you sick?" He said, "I'm
not sick, but," says, "you know I'm a-getting old and getting old
fast." He said, "Last year that rock wasn't even heavy and,"
he said, "I can't even wiggle it this time." He said, "I'm
breaking fast." And said he took about three more drinks of brandy and
went out there, and he got down on his knees, and he give a heave or two on
that rock and shook it and stuck it up over his head, and he had nine acres
of topsoil froze to it.
***
(448; 12:26)
[Photograph K]
FRAIL: You see I used to fox hunt a whole lot when I was little. And I always
loved to hear dogs run, and kept dogs all my life, up till I got a hold of
the Lord, I kept a bunch of hunting dogs. You go out of a night in these mountains,
you would go up here on a hill, you know, and turn our dogs loose. [Photograph
L] Well, maybe they'll run a hour over there on that side of the mountain,
then they go across the mountain out of our hearing. Well, we'd be a-setting
up here, well, there's nothing to do -- there wasn't no dogs to listen at
-- except talk.
***
FRAIL: and I always bragged on him about being the best coon
dog in the country, you know. And I know one night I was over there on the
mountain, and I could tell when he'd went over on the mountain and treed,
you know, and if he treed inside of a tree I could just holler, "Come
on," and he'd go and strike another coon. He wouldn't stay at the tree,
I didn't have to go over to him, you know. He just barked different, he barked
faster when he treed on the outside and where you could get the coons, but
if it was in a den -- he knew I wouldn't cut a den -- he'd just bark now and
then, but he'd still bark "treed," you know. So I went over there
one night and there was a big old hollow chest-nut over there on the mountain,
and he'd strike a coon and run and tree it in that chestnut. I'd say, "Come
on, we can't get him," and he'd take off and the first thing you know
he'd have another one a-going, and right back in the same chestnut. And he
run all night, I didn't count them, I wasn't too worried about how many he
treed. Next morning about daylight I decided to go over by and see the tree,
you know -- just curiosity. And I went over there and they's so many coons
in that old chestnut that ever time they'd inhale the about four inches and every time they'd exhale the crack'd go
back together and it was just a-skreeking, a-making a noise, you know.
***
(485; 13:28)
FRAIL: I tried to top it ever' time, you know, that was the
general theme. If somebody'd tell you one, why, tell him a little bigger one.
That one about the mill rock -- first time I heard that, it had a quarter
of an acre of topsoil froze to it, you know. They grow, they're sort of like
fish tales, you know. There's nothing that'll outgrow a tall tale and a fish
tale. That's the reason you've always had to have three sets of scales in
the world -- one to weigh produce on, one to weigh a man's fish on, and one
to weigh babies on."
***
(502; 13:56)
FRAIL: -- now I heard it for the truth. And my grandmother
used to tell it to me, and She was
half Indian. And one of her uncles, they said he was a bear hunter, and his
dog treed a bear up on the side of a mountain, and the bear was about to kill
all of his dogs. And this old man run in and grabbed the bear by the hind
leg and pulled his leg around the tree there on the side of the hill. And
he had a pine knot, just an old big pine knot, and beat that bear's brain
out with the other hand, held the bear by the hind leg and killed it with
a pine knot.
***
[Photograph M]
FRAIL: Back then there wasn't many cars. Kids couldn't get around and meet
people, you know. [Photograph N] You growed up with a little settlement and
you knew just people right around you. [Photograph O] Anybody off four or
five miles was a stranger to you, you know, you met them once in a while.
[Photograph P] The rest of it was all work, you see, and then telling tales.
***
(535; 14:51)
FRAIL: to the house, and old Mack was about six
foot four, you know. And he was pretty bad to drink, stay drunk about all
the time. And ever' time he'd come in and catch a cat a-setting around --
you know, old folks used to have a cat hole in the door, and the cats went
in and out anytime they wanted to. And that cat hole was never closed, regardless
of how cold it was, them cats could go in and out. Grandpa had give my sister
a little tabby kitten. I'd walk by and she'd have that cat a-holding it in
that old hat, a-carrying it around, you know, and I was always teasing her.
I'd walk by and tickle that cat in the breast, and boy, he'd nail me and put
that mouth on me, and if I moved he'd bite me. And I aggravated the little
old kitten all the time, and when it got up grown it made the biggest tom
cat I ever saw, I believe. It just kept a-growing. Course she was feeding
it all the time. She'd slip to the cupboard and she'd give it meat, and she
fed it raw meat, and she fed it milk, and every . . . She fed it twenty-five
times a day, you know, and it made a cat. Well, all the other cats was afraid
of it. But this old cat when he got grown didn't come in the house much --
I guess he had a time getting through the cat hole, it was so big, you know.
One night I let him in, and old Mack was there.
And Mack was always catching a cat around the fireplace, and he'd get it by
the ears and put it down between his legs 'til it couldn't scratch him, and
pull its head back there, and pinch its ears enough 'til it would start squawling.
And then he'd saw his fingers across its throat and make its voice tremble,
and it sounded sort of like a fiddle, you know, and he'd say he was playing
"Bobby Jones." Everytime he seen a cat, "Doggone, and he'd reach down and grab it, and up
he'd come with it, you know. And I opened the door one night -- and I'd been
a-wanting to see him get a-hold of that old big tom cat. I figured what'd
happen, you know. I opened the door one night and that old tom cat come in,
and walked up beside of Mack and set down and commenced to licking hisself
in front of the fire. And old Mack said, "Let's play "Bobby Jones,"
and grabbed that cat, you know. And he caught him up there, and the old cat
didn't pay much attention to him getting him up there. He got him by the ears,
and he pinched pretty hard and made one saw. That cat never squawled, but
when Mack rubbed that finger across his throat, he just reached up and nailed
him. He just eat all of that muscle out right there, in his palm, you know
-- just eat it 'til you could see the bone. Mack a-trying to sling him loose,
and he couldn't sling him loose. He had both claws just sunk up in his hand,
you know. That cat came loose, he just walked back over and set down. Mack
said, "Doggone, I believe I'll go home." I never did -- now I was
about, I guess, about ten year old and messed around a whole lot before Mack
died -- but I never did see Mack touch another cat as long as I lived. He'd
come down there to the house, but . . . and the cat walked in beside of him,
he'd never even look at them.
(616; 17:06)
JOYCE NEWMAN: Tell the one about Rufe Fletcher outside the church.
FRAIL: Oh, old Rufe. While we're on the Fletcher business, one time, you know, and he had that high
way of hollering out when he got sort of excited and talking, and when he
was drinking especially. There was a big oak tree stood out in front of the
church, you know, and the boys would gang up around the church and drink on
the outside back when I was young, and they'd usually have two or three fights
outside if they was having a service inside. We was all setting there in the
church and everything got sort of still, old Rufe hollered out, said, "W-r-r-r-ow!"
said, "some damn son of a bitch cut me." Everybody in there, you
just heard a whisper go over the room, said, "Rufe Fletcher." "Rufe
Fletcher."
(648; 18:00)
JIM JENNINGS: Remember that time one
night to get a light. Where did he walk to get one anyway?
FRAIL: He was over here at Com Holder's. Com live right over there past Edmond's
and Rufe lived about half way between there and Andrew Jennings's, you know.
And Rufe was drunk, and they heard him a-coming a-singing, and Com's wife
said, "Blow out the light and get in the bed," said "here comes
Rufe and he's drunk." And said, "He'll be aggravating us for two
or three hours," said, "let's just go on to bed and don't answer
him," said, "make out like you're asleep." Rufe went up and
knocked on the door, said, "Hello, Com. Hey, Com," said, "I
want to borrow a light." Nobody answered him, you know, and he knocked
three or four times, and nobody answered him. He said, "Go to hell, you
S.O.B. Go to hell, damn you." Said, "I'll go to Andrew Jennings's
and get me a damn light." And he'd a-had to walk right through his yard.
He lived about halfway between there and Andrew Jennings's. He said, :
"Going down to Big Chet's bar room,
Where the music goes around and around.
I drink that old corn liquor,
I lay my money down."
***
(684; 19:00)
BLANCHE: he sent me, and I didn't like the looks of that
at all. He looked so -- he looked so egotistical and looked like he was half
drunk and I didn't like the looks of it. I cried because he looked like that.
I felt sorry for him.
FRAIL: You didn't tell me that when I come home.
(700; 19:26)
BLANCHE: -- or came to my house -- on a Friday and asked me to
marry him Friday night after telling me for months he wouldn't ask any girl
to marry him while he was in the service because he might go over-seas and
get hurt and be a cripple, and he didn't want a woman to live with him because
she felt sorry for him. So he kept telling me all those months, you know,
just . . . He never would say anything about getting married. So then that
night when he came, he asked me if I would marry him, and onto that he said,
"Or would your mama let you marry me?" And I said, "Why don't
you ask her?" I didn't say yes or no, I just said, "Why don't you
ask her?" I didn't tell him that I would whether he asked her or not,
so he thought he had to ask Mama, and he spent all day the next day trying
to get up nerve enough to ask her for me. [Photograph Q] Finally he did, along
down late in the evening, and she said yes.
***
(735; 20:25)
BLANCHE: I don't remember anything at all about my father's family, because
when I was four years old. When I was about
six, then my mother remarried, and at that time, in the community where we
lived, divorce was a thing that was not accepted. Most of my not-too-good
memories there do consist of the rejection and the parents not allowing their
kids to play with us, to the point that they called us names and oftentimes
when we'd go to the johnny house or -- I don't know about my brother, I think
he got caught there a few times, but I know that I did definitely -- and they
would rock . . . throw rocks. And the johnny house had a tin roof, of course,
and you'd hear the rocks hitting on the top. And I'd sit there or stand and
peep out the door, afraid to go out because I was afraid I'd get hit with
a rock. I guess I was pretty much of a coward in those days.
(771; 21:25)
My stepfather and my mother didn't get along very well, because he was something
like twenty years younger. They would get into a quarrel, and Mama would de-cide
to commit suicide. And the way she thought she would do it was to go out to
the railroad track and walk in front of a train. And so, she used to do that,
I mean she used to actually walk to the railroad track. And especially my
younger brother and I -- just going along now, tugging to her clothes, trying
to pull her and hold her back to keep her from going, and just crying and
screaming. Of course, we'd go on out there and the train would pass and my
mother would still be there. We'd go back to the house. And as time would
go on there'd be another such occasion. But even that passed and . . . I never
hear a train whistle that I don't think about it.
***
(804; 22:20)
FRAIL: [Photograph X] So you see, I married her the second time I ever saw
her practically, you know. I come home and saw her one time, and come back,
why, we got married just as soon as we could get things through and get married.
And I was scared, I'll tell the truth about it. It was the only time in my
life, except when something scared me when I was right little, that I really
was scared, only time after I got up anything like grown.
BLANCHE: I know one other tine.
FRAIL: Well, yeah, I do too, I was just as scared,
my knees was a-shaking, and I wanted to run and didn't have sense enough.
And I've regretted it ever since. No, I don't reckon I have, but I've often
wondered why I didn't.
BLANCHE: You couldn't.
FRAIL: Couldn't? No, you had a-hold of me, didn't you?
BLANCHE: No, it . . . Well, I had a-hold of your hand -- and besides, it was
meant to be.
***
(834; 23:10)
[Photograph Y]
FRAIL: I'd never been out of North Carolina. It was all new. All something
entirely different, and the biggest thing was, you know, that I had to take
orders.
***
FRAIL: and I heard these two colonels from two other
thousand-bed hospitals tell our colonel, said, "We're getting a thousand
men in. We can handle all of them, or any part of then." And our colonel
said, "No, my men'll be glad to handle them." Which wasn't a thing
in the world only just wanting a big name on a-handling more patients than
the rest of them. He didn't have no mercy on the men that was working, because
we was worked to death.
about eight inches of snow on the
ground, and they had a line of walking patients a-coming up from the hospital,
a-standing outside in the cold. And some of them barefooted and some of them
with no coat, just a undershirt on,. And I gave my coat and shirt to one or
two of them that was bad, that was naked almost. And they put me in charge
of a group of Ger-man prisoners they had, and they was wounded and they told
me to just hold them till they got the Americans in the hospital. And I stood
out there and my teeth chattered all night, and held these German prisoners
there. And a lot of them barefooted, just kids. And American boys standing
out there. Well, they had one man admitting them into the hospital. And right
across the street the colonel and eight or ten officers and a bunch of --
or maybe twenty-five officer -- and a bunch of nurses, over there having them
a drunken party. You could hear them just a-giggling and a-laughing and a-dancing
in there. And the more I stood and listened, the madder I got, just thinking
they could have put two of them out there and let them a-helped get these
guys in the hospital. And I'm telling you what's the truth, if I'd a-had a
little bunch of dynamite, about four tons, stuck under that thing and a little
switch where it was -- made it went off -- that building would have went so
high you'd have seen arms and legs a-flying clean back over here. I'd have
blowed that whole thing away. And I was so mad, I was just shaking like a
leaf. I didn't eat a bite for three or four days and nights. And some of them
come around and said one morning, said, If you want to volunteer for the infantry,
said, run over to the office right now. Boy, I run over everything getting
over there. And I got over there, the whole outfit was lining up.
***
(911; 25:18)
FRAIL: you couldn't tell him a
thing in the world. Ever' time we'd come to a forks in the road, he'd jerk
out his map and holler for the communications corporal and the first sergeant
and any other sergeant standing around, and I'd go up with him there, you
know. "Now which way this say go here?" and "Which way does
this say go?" And if we told him one way, he'd go the other. And we soon
found out to tell him the wrong way, and then we'd keep him sort of straightened
out, you know. But he'd go right backwards to what we told him ever time.
And so I kept telling him, I said, "Lieutenant, you're going to ride
up in some town some of these times . . . We was supposed to been a-backing
the infantry up, and we was on jeeps, you see, and they was a-walking. And
he'd get ahead of them; he'd get a little faster than they could walk, you
know, and just drive off and leave them. And I kept telling him, I said, "Lieutenant,
you're going into town some of these times, and they're going to wipe us out."
"Aw, no, no, this has been cleaned out two or three weeks ago."
This was always cleaned out two or three weeks ago. We drove up right in the
middle of this town, four jeeps of us and all of us right in the center, just
in a wad, and parked right around where there's a square there. They had a
well -- most of your towns had a watering trough thing, you know, a pump,
where they got water; the whole town'd get water -- we drove right up to that
pump, and there was a big oak tree there. Boy, they opened up on us from every
window around there with rifles, machine guns. And I jumped out, and there
was a big oak tree there, and bark commenced to knocking off, and I went around
that oak tree about twice, you know. And one old boy jumped up and just hit
on the ground and then crawled under the jeep. And he'd tease me for a long
time after then, and he said that when me and him jumped out of the jeep at
the same time and said I went around that oak tree four times before he hit
the ground, I was moving so fast. Said, "Doc don't need to tell me he
can't move," said, "I saw him come around that oak tree four times
before I hit the ground."
***
(972; 27:00)
FRAIL: And one day you
know, and you could see these big old cement pillboxes over on this ridge
and one over there and one over yonder, you know. And I thought I saw a gray
overcoat run around behind one. I said, "Lieutenant, I believe I saw
some Germans over yonder at that pillbox." "Aw, you're crazy,"
said, "B Company cleaned this out a week ago." And we got out there
and drove up to some barracks and here come about seventy-five German officers
with their hands stuck up in the air, you know, and here commenced coming
enlisted men from every direction. . . .
from everywhere and that lieutenant was just as
white as a sheet. Thirty, about thirty-one of us boys, and that many Germans
just coming from every direction with guns, you know a-handing them to us.
They thought we had them surrounded. They didn't think anybody was just crazy
enough, thirty men, to ride up among all them Germans and them big old fortified
pillboxes where you couldn't have knocked out with a artillery piece, you
know, and just ride up there in the open like ducks, you know, and ride right
up to the barracks and stop. They knowed anybody had better sense than that.
And then people talk about how we licked the Germans. Like I said, we got
them so confused they quit, we never did lick them. Praise the Lord.
***
(1010; 28:03)
BLANCHE: I could tell that . . . that the war was in a way changing him, [Photograph
Z] and changing his ideas and hurting his faith. Because before he went over
he was . . . he seemed, you know, to really have a profound faith and a belief
in God. But all the things that he saw there, [Photograph A1] the suffering
of . . . especially of children -- that seemed to . . . to really get to him.
***
[Photograph A2]
FRAIL: You can cut a TV off if the film gets too rough, [Photograph A3] but
over there on the front lines you don't cut it off. It's right there, and
you're in it. [Photograph A4] There ain't no such thing as flipping a little
button and walking in the other room and getting you a sandwich and a good
drink. [Photograph A5] You are there and there ain't no way of getting out.
***
FRAIL: [Photograph A6] We got over there and when we got in there where the
Germans had all these places where they burnt them Jews, of men and women, mostly women and old
men and little chil-dren. They would put about a foot of unslaked lime, and,
you know, you take water and put it in unslaked lime and it'll heat and the
heat set on fire and burn. And it gets hot. And they'd put these people in
there in that lime and just -- as many as they could stand up. And they had
what they called forty-by-eights, that was supposed to hold forty men or eight
cows, maybe they'd stack a hundred in there, just like sar-dines, just take
their gun butts and beat them in there and them with kids in their arms in
that lime, and then shut the door, and then they'd go to sweating and the
sweat would make that fire go to . . . that lime go to catching on fire, and
it'd burn the meat off their bones and them a-screaming and a-dying like that
. . .
had never done nothing to the Germans. And just see them
standing in that lime, meat burned off up to their knees and them a-screaming
and dying locked up in there, and nobody to let them out nor this, that and
the other. And then when you let them out, have somebody half burnt-up grab
you around the legs and kiss your shoes. We never went through nothing like
that in this country. And if you can go through something like that and come
out and not be changed, you're going to have to . . . you're going to be different
to what I always was.
***
(1083; 30:05)
(John Handley Marching Judges of Winchester, Va.)
[Photograph A7]
[Photograph A8]
[Photograph A9]
FRAIL: After the war, Holly Farms come in here and they commenced to commercializing
raising chickens. People commenced moving off of the farms, off of the farms
and going to the cities, you know, to get jobs in mills and things because
it wasn't as hard a labor and they had more money to spend and it just made
altogether a change. All in my lifetime I've seen it just turn right around
from one way to go back the other one. I saw it turn from horses to tractors,
you know, and I wouldn't be sur-prised if I don't see it
***
FRAIL: There's in Wilkes County now as there was when
I was a boy, and ten times as many people, twenty times as many people living
in it. There's twenty times the homes that there was when I was a boy, and
just about one-third the cleared land that there was back then. See, people
lived off of the land, they didn't have all the public jobs, and now they
just got a place big enough for a yard and a house, and then the fields grow
up. But I don't know what's the dif-ference in having what you get by raising
it on the land or working money out and scrubbing yourself to death in a factory
to buy what you have to have. I'd rather . . . I'd rather work outside than
inside, so I'd rather raise it as to beat my brains out a-trying to get it
out of the factory.
***
(1157; 32:08)
FRAIL: [singing] and the hide in the churn,
The meat in the cupboard and the hide in the churn,
The meat in the cupboard and the hide in the churn,
If that ain't good stuff, I'll be durned, groundhog.
Yonder comes Sal with a smile and a grin,
Yonder comes Sal with a smile and a grin,
Yonder comes Sal with a smile and a grin, [Photograph A10]
Groundhog gravy all over her chin, groundhog.
***
FRAIL: Father, we thank you for another wonderful day, thank you for every
blessing, Bless it, that we might eat it to nourish our
body, we might use our strength to glorify thee, for we ask it in Jesus' name.
Amen. Praise the Lord.
[to granddaughter] What do you want girl, hmmm? You want something to eat?
***
(1183; 32:51)
BLANCHE: when Carol was, oh, a few months old, there
was a real bad electric storm and we were just sitting down to eat, and the
lightning ran in and bursted the bulb over the table and after that she was
real scared of storms. And one evening a cloud came up and it began to thundering
and lightning and she began to be frightened, you know, and he came in from
the orchard where he was working and took her in his arms and walked out up
in the orchard as the storm came up. After that she was not afraid of them.
***
(1201; 33:21)
FRAIL: ; tommy tinker, nose dropper, mouth eater, chin chopper,
goozle popper. You like that? Play it again. Headacher, nose dropper, mouth
eater, chin chopper, goozle popper. You going to play it on Grandpa? You going
to play it on Grandpa?
BLANCHE: Come here. Headacher . . . Go ahead.
FRAIL: It's all over, now Grandma, she's done had that two or three times,
that's enough.
***
(1224; 34:00)
BROWN OSBORNE: That little pine's got to go there. Doing fine. Move it out
of the way.
FRAIL: Delayed fall.
BROWN: I caught that one. Up the hill about three . . . Good, right there.
Okay, give me a stake.
***
(1270; 35:16)
FRAIL: I'd rather get out here and dig ditches as to work on a truck, any
kind of work outside, any kind, it don't make no difference, hacking lumber,
saw milling, or cutting timber . . . Why, if I hadn't a-had pressure on me,
a man couldn't have forced me into no garage a-working in grease and oil and
stuff, because I've always despised to smell gas and motor oil and stuff like
that. That's one job that I used to swear that I wouldn't have. Nobody couldn't
give it to me. And then took it and worked at it fourteen years. I just never did get financially able to even
start thinking about a farm. Land commenced to jumping in price, jumping
in price, and I found this place right here. Now when Blanche went into the
flower shop business, if she hadn't a-got sick, why I'd have probably turned
loose and went into it, but I was working until she got the business, and
she got the business up to where it was making pretty good when she come down
sick and had to quit, you see. She just had to quit and sell out. And that
stopped that. And I don't know, just . . . just one thing right after another
one. Well, even a-working over yonder on the . . . in the garage, I run a
truck over a bank and broke my back.
***
(1314; 36:30)
FRAIL: In 1965 my wife was running a flower shop and and she went to a family doctor regular, and
she went to him and he examined her and he said, "I can't believe what
I've found. I want you to run more checks and get other people's . . . another
doctor's ideas about this." So he run cardiograms and things on her and
he told her, "You've got just a little bit of fiber for a heart."
And she had emphysema, and her body gathered fluid, she had to take fluid
pills all the time. And she . . . .He told her she had complete cardiac failure,
and he put her on ten hours of bed rest at night and three hours the middle
of the day. He said, "I don't mean lay down on a couch or some-thing
or nother and watch TV, I mean go to bed." . . .
and she wouldn't let them know
how bad she was. Course they knew, but she didn't want me to say nothing to
them, afraid they'd quit school and she wanted them all to have a college
education. And this doctor had told her . . . She told him she couldn't 'til
she got her kids through college and he said, "You'd better do some praying."
***
(1354; 37:36)
BLANCHE: Well, about what he was feeling, but it was . . . it was
visible, I mean, he . . . His health seemed to go down, and, of course, he
did have some problems, he had hemorrhoids. And then later high blood pressure.
And I'm sure that he was real discouraged although he didn't . . . he didn't
say too much about it, but you could tell it was there. And it seemed that
he began to age a lot faster than . . . than he should have. And so we just
. . . There's just no way to describe how you go from day to day in something
like that, except just to say that you . . . you just accept it and you live
with it and make the best of it.
***
(1382; 38:23)
FRAIL: I'd quit going to churches because I didn't see nothing in them. I
told my wife, I said, "If you go to church and you hear a man preach
and you come out mad, you're better off to stay at home than you are to go
to church." I said, "There's none of them that believes in God,"
I said, "they preach it, but they don't believe it." And I don't
know, I always believed there was a God, but I'd been taught that he was far
off, he'd died 2,000 years ago, and he'd come back some day and blow a trumpet
and pick me up and take me to Heaven, maybe, if I was good enough to pass
the test. And that was as far as my God went.
***
BLANCHE: all the children were home from school, and Carol
ran everybody out of bed that morning and told them they were going to church
with Mama, and so we all went to church. And this morning when I walked into
the sanctuary, there was a joy like nothing I'd ever felt in my whole life,
and it just seemed to envelop me. And it was such a joy that I couldn't keep
the tears from flowing, just a singing, beautiful joy like nothing I'd ever
felt.
****
FRAIL: and this little preacher got up and he said, "Lord
promised me a miracle," Said, "who believes in miracles?" And
two or three of us raised our hands and I guess there was about eighty or
ninety in the church. And two or three of us raised our hands. So he got up
and preached, and I didn't . . . couldn't tell you today one word he preached.
But I thought when he was preaching, now he's preaching to my brother and
he's going to get him to go up and re-dedicate his life. And when he stood
up and give the altar call, here went my brother. He walked right up beside
of me. But before my brother started up there, there was some-thing inside
of me went around and said, "Whish, whish, whish, whish, whish."
And it kept getting faster, and every time it went around it was hot. It felt
like a coal of fire about the size of your hand a-going around inside of me.
And when we was kids we used to go to molasses makings and we'd take a rag
and soak it in kerosene oil -- everybody had kerosene lanterns -- and we'd
soak this rag in kerosene oil and tie it on the end of a stick and light it
and sling it around and around, you know, and we'd say -- it'd make a whishing
sound. We'd say we was making a ribbon of fire, and you could sling it fast
enough till it'd look like a ribbon of fire, you know. And that's what I thought
of.
But it was, I got to boiling. And there was an old
school teacher that taught me and all three of my children a-standing in front
of me. And I was a-gripping the back of the pew, and I thought if I opened
my mouth, the steam would boil out, and it'd scald her to death. And I was
gritting my teeth, and I thought the steam was a-coming out of my eyes, my
ears, and my nose. And when my brother and his wife walked by, they looked
like they was about eighteen inches high and I was looking at them through
a big fog. And I couldn't understand why my wife wasn't concerned because
I was a-boiling. And all at once I knew she was going, and I thinks, What's
she going for? She's ready to die, and the doctor told her she couldn't live
another month hardly. She come home and said he wasn't expecting to see her
again because he just told her to come back in four weeks and . . . I mean
six weeks instead of four . . . and he wouldn't give her a month to live,
and she said, "He's not expecting to see me no more." I thinks,
What's she going to the altar for? And when she got about halfway up there,
the thought hit me, you touch that preacher or you're going to melt and run
across the floor like butter. And I said, Lord, there ain't no way, I can't
get up there. I don't have the strength to get there. And the next thing I
knew I was there, with my wife. And the preacher put one hand on my shoulder
and one hand on her shoulder, and we knelt down And just about the tine my
knees hit the floor, all this heat left me. I just got up and walked back
to my seat. I didn't go up there for nothing except to keep from melting.
***
(1502; 41:43)
BLANCHE: As we knelt, I felt just something happened, seemed like in the back
of my head, in the base of my skull, and it was like -- I thought -- like
an electric shock. Because Ií' been shocked pretty bad one time before,
and I knew, you know, the similarity. It was sort of the same feeling. And
that just seemed to spread through my body, and of course the thought that
flashed through my mind was that I was having a heart attack. But I was so
happy, it didn't make any difference, you know.
***
(1520; 42:13)
FRAIL: And when I got back to my seat, my wife came back. And my oldest daughter
grabbed her and started crying. And that was unusual, for her to cry in front
of anybody. And so we got about halfway home, I wouldn't talk, and I was studying
about this heat. I wasn't interested in nothing else going on around me. I'd
felt something -- God had come alive, and I knew He had power over me, to
make me go up in a little puff of smoke, or just do away with me. Instead
of being a God that died 2,000 years ago, He was here now and He had power
over me. And I knew it. And we started home, and got about halfway home. Carol
looked over at her mother, and she said, "You think the Lord healed your
heart, don't you?" She said, "I know he did."
and she tied seven different kinds of medicine up in a plastic
bag and set it in the middle of the table, and says, "I am healed."
Well, He didn't heal the emphysema now, He healed her heart. And the following
Wednesday, one week or ten days later, we went over there to prayer meeting
-- the preacher wasn't there. And she still couldn't lay down. She'd set up
and propped up on seven or eight pillows all these years, you know, and she
couldn't lay flat in the bed. And so we went over there to this prayer meeting,
and they asked me to dismiss the service, and when I was a-praying, just as
soon as I got through, she said, "Let's go," and we took out. And
I said, "What's the matter, didn't you like my prayer?" And she
said, "I've got to get home, honey," said, "I'm so sick I feel
like I'm going to die." Well, I knew she hadn't took no medicine in ten
days and the doctor had told her not to do without that medicine at all, to
have it at all times. And I felt of her pulse and her heart was good and strong,
and she said, "It's not my heart," said "I'm sick." And
I brought her home, and she vomited up nearly the commode full of old blue
-- old pus like comes out of a boil or a sore, you know, that's infected.
And she just almost filled the commode. And it stunk like a dead horse. And
I finally got her to the bedroom, and in a little bit I went back in there
and checked her. And I was in the living room a-praying, and I felt the presence
of the Lord in that room. The spirit of the Lord just almost picked me off
the couch. I was laying on the couch. And in a little bit she called me and
said, "Come in here." And I walked in there, and she said, "Take
these pillows out from under my head and let me lay flat on the bed, just
leave one." She had seven stacked up, and was a-setting up against them.
I took them out and laid her down flat. She had two foam pads she'd put under
her legs they had swelled so bad, and she'd been a-sleeping in a -- just like
in a hammock, with her feet on them two thick foam pads and on these pillows
for six and a half years. She said, "Take them out and lay my legs flat
on the bed." And I did, and she laid there a minute or two, and I says,
"You all right?" And she said, "I feel great."
***
(1605; 44:35)
BLANCHE: And we spent the summer crying and praying and seeking God and going
to services and sharing what had happened in our lives. And, of course, there
were a few who received it, and there were many who didn't. But it didn't
change the fact that it was real and it still is. Many tines Frail, especially
when he'd have the visions that he's talked about, he would cry and look at
me and say, "Honey, am I losing my mind?" And, "Why is all
this happening to me?" He'd say, "Why hasn't it happened to some
of those people who've been church members all their life and who have been
good people?" He just never could seem to quite understand why God chose
to move and work in him this way. But to me it was the most beautiful thing
I'd ever seen. But if I hadn't really known surely that it was God, I would
have been afraid.
***
(1650; 45:50)
FRAIL: we was out here at the house,
setting in a chair out there, and a whole bunch of them -- we was praying
for one another. And somebody'd set in the chair and say, "I'm so-and-so,"
somebody they knew that was sick, you know, and have us pray for them. They
was setting by proxy, as they called it, and we was praying for them. Some
of them come over and just put their hands on me and said, "Let's pray
for Frail." Said, "What do you want us to pray for?" And I
said, "That I'll get closer to the Lord." And next thing I knew,
I was up somewhere up in the air looking down at them, and all of them . .
. I could see me a-setting there and all of them with their hands around on
it. And it didn't seem too strange to me, you know. I didn't think too strange
about it. But I don't remember coming out of my body, and I don't remember
going back in it, but the next thing you know, I was there in my body.
I went out on the hill out there, and I got
down and started praying one morning. I just woke up and I was so full of
the Spirit I couldn't tell when I had anything in my hand. When I went to
eat breakfast, I couldn't tell when I had the fork in my hand or anything.
And I told Blanche, I said, "Call my boss and tell him I won't be in
this morning." I said, "I couldn't do nothing if I was to go over
there, and I don't know whether I could drive over there or not." Well,
I went out there on the hill and got down under a poplar tree and started
praying. And all at once, I just come out of my body, and I come out of the
back of my head then. And I felt like I went up in the air till I looked like
I was a . . . one of these . . . You ever seen these old, what they used to
call kewpie dolls dressed in overalls? But, I was up in the air and I saw
myself there with coveralls on, down under this tree, down on my knees. But
now the thought hit me, "Now, what will Blanche say when she comes out
here and finds me and I'm not there?" I thought she'd find my body, but
I wouldn't be there. And I felt like that I was just held up there in the
air, and I come down like I was going back and then I'd go up higher. And
I'd come down like I was coming back and then I'd go up higher. And I just
got on up till I couldn't see my body. And then I slowly come back down and
went in the back of my neck.
***
(1716; 47:40)
HAROLD PIERCE: let's lay aside the principles of the doctrines of Christ,
let's go on into perfection, glory to God. And this is the hour that the nature
of Jesus is being implanted in his brothers. Because that's the only way that
we can have the truth of God, is to eat his flesh, and drink his blood. If
you don't do it, you're not going to have any life in you. Glory to God. And
the Bible said when they came out of Egypt, there was not a feeble one among
them, glory to God. And I want you to know that as we eat his flesh and drink
his blood, there'll not be a feeble one among us. There won't be any more
prayer lines anymore. Glory to God. If you know God for yourself, you don't
have to have another man to pray for you.
JOHN TAYLOR: Hallelujah, he's not a far-off God, He's a very present God.
He's closer than even our brother that sets beside us, because he's in us.
Hallelujah!
***
(1573; 43:41)
FRAIL: I'd stop preachers right in the middle of their sermons, go into strange
churches. The Lord'd say, "Go," and when I got there, right in the
middle of the sermon, he'd say, "Get up and stop the preacher and testify."
And I'd get up and stop him. People'd say, "You'll get throwed out on
your head." My wife used to tell me, "You're going to get throwed
out on your head." I said, "Me and the Lord's a majority in any
crowd. I'm not afraid." And I wasn't, because I was obeying the Lord.
***
(1768; 49:06)
RAY TOWNSELL: Praise God forever more. Praise the Lord. Come on.
FRAIL: Brother Pierce said there was a time of trouble ahead. Not for God's
people, there's not time of trouble for God's people except one thing. And
that is fear of the unknown. We've got to enter into a spiritual realm that
this flesh has never walked in before. That's the reason he said, "Them
will become Sons of God that's led by the Spirit." Because we'll go anywhere
if we're a-following that Spirit it wants to take us. And if we're following
man or flesh we're going to back down when we get to going into this spiritual
realm. God has showed me that everything that we've been preached has just
been stepping stones to get to where we can enter into this spiritual realm.
All this stuff that we've been preached will be so obsolete in a year from
now, we won't even listen at it no more. We'll think, "How foolish I
was a year ago." Because we're going to go somewhere that Peter started
when he started walking on that water and his faith failed him.
(1796; 49:53)
CONGREGATIONAL SONG: . . .
***
FRAIL: Jesus, when he met the woman at the well, he didn't condemn her and
tell her she couldn't enter the kingdom of Heaven, she was living in sin,
or anything of the kind. But she had enough faith that he was God until she
was filled with the Spirit. God is trying to show us that He's not so interested
in what this flesh does, he's a-wanting to get that Spirit back centered to
Him, you see. That was the part he breathed into man to make him a living
soul. As far as God's concerned, the rest of man is just the same as me a-going
out here and plowing dirt. I use dirt to grow my stuff, but what does the
dirt mean to me? The corn I'm a-growing is what I'm after, and that's the
way God is by man. It's what the mind is centered on, the heart's centered
on, what the soul's after. That's what He's perfecting.
***
(1826; 50:43)
BLANCHE: as I was waking up. As I was waking up, it
seemed like that just all kind of shapes and forms were kind of spinning around
in my mind, and as I came fully awake they just formed a pattern, and it was
this. And it just stayed on my mind, and I got up and got breakfast and started
-- after breakfast -- started doing the dishes, and I kept . . . I just couldn't
get the picture out of my mind. So I got a pencil and some graph paper, and
sat down and drew the pattern. And as I was drawing it, I realized that it
was, to me anyway, it seemed to be a quilt pattern. And the words, "the
woman at the well," just kept going through my mind. So I thought, well,
that must be . . . It's a quilt pattern and that's the name it's supposed
to have.
[starts mid-sentence]. . that as Christ, the
center, the well of living water. And some have explained it different ways
with the colors and the numbers being symbols of different ways with the colors
and the numbers being symbols of different things. But I really, as far as
a revelation for me on the meaning of it, I don't have. To me it's still just
the square and -- a quilt square -- and that's the name. It came from somewhere,
and I like to think it was from the Holy Spirit.
***
(1877; 52:08)
FRAIL: I told it on you a few times. I told that the night
she got married she had two dollars. I mean that night after we got married,
she had two dollars, and she went and wanted her mama to keep it for her.
And her Mama says, "Why don't you keep it?" She says, "You
think I'm going to sleep with a strange man with two dollars in my pocket?
He might get it."
BLANCHE: I didn't even have two dollars. I spent it all.
FRAIL: Well, I didn't say you did. I said I told it on you. There's one thing
about it, she couldn't have married me for my money, because I didn't have
none left when we got through getting married. I was making all of twenty-one
dollars a month.
BLANCHE: You had seven dollars after we got married.
FRAIL: Did I?
BLANCHE: That's what you told me. You had seven dollars. And then we bought
a bus ticket for the two of us up here to visit your rela-tives. And we walked
everywhere we went up here. Walked from Moravian, and we rode a . . . Oh,
it was so hot that day. And we walked from Moravian . . . rode a bus from
town out to Moravian and walked from there to Brocktown. And I can still hear
that water in Cub Creek down there, that runs alongside the road -- it wasn't
paved then, it was a dirt road. And there I was with my good shoes, and I
didn't know I was going to have to walk that far. And we was walking up there,
and that water was running down there, and it sounded so cool, and so good,
I wanted to go down there and wade in it. But we kept walking. We just had
to keep on walking.
FRAIL: We walked about two mile and a half. And I was used to ten or fifteen
mile hikes. That didn't seem like nowhere to me.
BLANCHE: Yes, but I wasn't. All I was used to doing was hiking back and forth
to the cornfield.
FRAIL: You just made out to me like you was just able to do anything anybody
else was.
BLANCHE: I was. I did it, didn't I?
FRAIL: I know, but you've grumbled about it ever since.
BLANCHE: No, I was just talking about it. The thing that I remember so is
the sound of that water and how cool it sounded. The day was so hot, and that
water sounded so cool and good. Oh, I was happy. I didn't mind the walk. I'd
a-walked if I'd a- . . .
FRAIL: Well, I'd a-carried you if you'd just said you was tired.
BLANCHE:
(1952; 54:13)
CREDITS
Funding provided by grants to the North Carolina Arts Council and Institute
for Southern Studies from
The National Endowment for the Arts
The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation
The Hillsdale Fund
The John Wesley and Anna Hodgin Hanes Foundation
Funding assistance by Philip Hanes.
Directed and Edited by Tom Davenport, with Daniel Patterson, Allen Tullos,
and Joyce Joines Newman.
Photographed by Tom Davenport.
Sound recording by Allen Tullos.
Associate Producer, Mimi Davenport.
Editorial Assistance from Laurel Horton, James Peacock, Carol Joines Sivalia,
and Charles T. Zug, III.
Technical Assistance from Laurel Horton, Jim Wise, Jerry Joines, John Newman,
Roger Manley, Doug DeNatale, Bob Murray, Alan Baragona, Debbie Riggsbee, Bambi
Grimes, and Paddy Bowman.
Photographs from the Joines family album, The University of North Carolina
Libraries, Bayard Wooten, The Library of Congress, The Jay Anderson Collection,
The North Carolina Department of Archives, The Wilkes County Chamber of Commerce,
Barry Pose and Dave Freeman, and North Carolina State University.
Music from Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, John Handly Marching
Judges of Winchester, Virginia.
Special thanks to Frail and Blanche James, Jim Jennings, Fleet Brock, Brown
Osborne, The congregation of the Faith in Jesus Tabernacle.Sound Recordings
Field tapes are cited as "FT" followed by an accession number. All
tapes (together with out-takes from the film footage) are in the folklore
archives of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Photographs
Listed in the order of their appearance in the film and keyed to the alphabetical
symbols in the transcription of the sound track.
A - Photograph of a log cabin at the foot of a tree-covered hillside [Western
North Carolina, ca. 1915], William Barnhill Collection, Library of Congress.
Aa - Photograph of John E. "Frail" Joines at the age of six or seven,
from the Joines family collection.
B - Photograph of men and a team of oxen pulling logs [Logging in Burke County,
N. C.], from a copy in the North Carolina Collection, UNC Library, Chapel
Hill.
C - Photograph of man plowing with two mules on a hillside [Farming in Burke
County, N. C.], from a copy in the North Carolina Collection, UNC Library,
Chapel Hill.
D - Photograph of men and a whiskey still [Moonshine Still], Courtesy of Woolten-Moulton
Photographers, Chapel Hill.
E - Photograph of children hoeing on a hillside, Source?
Ea - Photograph of children in a wagon hitched to a cow, little boy holding
the lines [Children at Play near Mt. Pisgah, N. C., ca. 1915], William Barnhill
Collection, Library of Congress.
F - Photograph of a small child clutching a hen [Children had few toys, The
Warren's, Eastern Mt. Pisgah, N. C. ca. 1915], William Barnhill Collection,
Library of Congress.
G - Photograph of Frail Joines's father, John Wesley James, from the family
album.
H - Photograph of Frail Joines's mother, Gertrude Brock Joines, from the family
album.
I - Photograph of three seated men playing a guitar, banjo and fiddle in front
of a circle of people [Frank Blevins and the Tar Heel Rattlers], Courtesy
of Barry Pass and Dave Freeman.
Ja - Closeup from Photograph J of a man in overalls playing a fiddle in front
of a car.
Jb - Closeup from Photograph J of man playing a guitar.
Jc - Closeup from Photograph J of two men, one playing a banjo and the other
a guitar.
J - Photograph of four men standing in front of an automobile playing guitar,
fiddle, banjo and guitar. [Shortbuckle Roark and unknown musicians, Kentucky,
ca. 1925], courtesy of Barry Foss and Dave Freeman.
K - Photograph of four men with hunting dogs, two are in overalls, two have
on ????? hats and one a jacket and fedora [Hunters and Dogs], courtesy of
Wootten-Moulton Photographers, Chapel Hill.
L - Photograph of men sitting on ground around a large campfire, with hunting
dogs [Hunters around Campfire, two photographs], courtesy of Wootten- Moulton
Photographers, Chapel Hill.
La - Closeup of Photograph L, one man in the circle with dogs.
Lb - Men gazing into campfire.
M - Photograph of young boy riding a mule [Boy on a Mule], courtesy of the
North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh.
N - Photograph of a group of people sitting in front of a log, cabin, stacks
of corn stalks in the foreground ["Corn Shucking at Jim Franklin's -
Oct. 27, 1910"], North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh.
0 - Photograph of man staning in a wagon hitched to an ox, young man standing
beside it [Ox and Wagon], Courtesy of Wootten-Moulton Photographers, Chapel
Hill.
P - Photograph of men and haystack [Haying in Burke County, N. C.], from a
copy in the North Carolina Collection, UNC Library, Chapel Hill.
Q - Closeup of Photograph Qa.
R - Photograph of Blanche Clanton (Joines) at the age of 4, with bowl haircut
by mother, a school photograph from the family album.
Qa - Photograph of children picking cotton in a field [Cotton Sharecropping
family, Statesville, N. C., 1939], Marion Wolcott Collection, Yarn Security
Administration, Library of Congress.
S - Photograph of a row of mill houses [Mill Village], Courtesy of Atlanta
Historical Society.
T - Photograph of Blanche Joines's mother, Carrie Destamona Gentle, and her
second husband, Tom Smith, and their daughter, Blanche's half-sister, Alilee
Smith Dreibelbis.
U - Photograph of Carrie Smith in a rocking chair, from the family album.
V - Photograph of Blanche Clanton [Joines] with her youngest brother John;
she is wearing argyle socks knit by her mother, from the family album.
W - Photograph of Carrie Smith standing in a doorway, from the family album.
X - Frail and Blanche James the day before their wedding on August 9, 1943,
from the family album.
Y - Series of photographs of Frail Joines in the Army, from the family album:
a - Photograph of Frail Joines and another soldier pretending to box; Joines
is shirtless and the other man is wearing a singlet; made in Colorado Springs
during basic training.
b - Photograph of Frail Joines in uniform standing on top of Pike's Peak,
Colorado.
c - Photograph of Frail Joines in uniform with a backpack, made in Colorado
Springs.
Z - Studio photograph of Frail Joines in uniform made in Austria after the
war ended, from the Joines family album.
Al - Photograph of Frail Joines sitting on steps with a small Austrian girl,
from the Joines family album.
A2 - A5 Military photographs of World War II, from the National Archives,
Washington, D. C.
A2 - Photograph of tank and soldiers during battle.
A3 - Photograph of soldiers and tanks in a road.
A4 - Photograph of three soldiers with machine guns in town streets.
A5 - Photograph of crowd of soldiers and concentration camp survivors in striped
suits.
A6 - Series of photographs of parades in North Wilkesboro, courtesy of J.
Jay Anderson and Blanche C. Joines.
a - Photograph of Liberty Theatre float showing soldiers raising an American
flag.
b - Photograph of automobile in parade on Main Street, North Wilkesboro.
c - Photograph of Coca-Cola float.
d - Photograph of majorettes and band.
e - Photograph of float with sign, "Prevent Forest Fires: Help Us Keep
Wilkes County Green"
f - Photograph of Chamber of Commerce float.
g - Girls in an open automobile as Wilkesboro Beauty School float.
h - Furniture float.
i - Float depicting a train.
A7 - Aerial photograph of Wilkesboro/North Wilkesboro, courtesy of J. Jay
Anderson.
A7a - Photograph of dressed chickens in front of a sign for Holly Farms Poultry,
Courtesy of
A8 - Footage from silent film shot in Wilkesboro ca. 1950, courtesy of the
Wilkes County Chamber of Commerce.
A9 - Photograph of Frail and Blanche Joines with a nephew.
A10 - Photograph of Frail Joines in overalls with daughters Joyce and Carol,
made at the ABC Orchards in the Brushy Mountains ca. 1951.
A11 - Photograph of Frail Joines holding son Jerry with daughters standing
beside him, made at Fairplains, Wilkes County, NC, ca. 1952.
A12 - Photograph of Carol, Joyce and Jerry Joines, made during a family camping
vacation on the Blue Ridge Parkway, ca. 1962.
A13 - Photograph of the Joines family seated on a sofa, made at Pores Knob
ca. 1964.
