After they got home from picking up chestnuts, all of the kids started bagging up the chestnuts to have them ready for tomorrow’s trip into town. Earl said, “Carl Ray, let’s step over to the swang while the kids are finishin’ up. I want to ask you something. Did you happen to notice any blight on that old tree? It’s the last chestnut tree in this holler.”
Carl Ray said, “Unfortunately, yes. Low down on the trunk it is circling half way around the tree. The tree only has probably one more pickin’ on it and I’m thinkin’ next year we will be lucky to see any at all.”
“That’s what I was afeared of,” his daddy answered.
“What are you afeared of daddy?” Hattie Mae asked. “You ain’t feared of nothin’, right?”
“Oh Honey, this ain’t like bein afeared of bears or mountain lions. It’s just a manner of speakin’. It’s just something I wish wouldn’t happen, but it’s time has come,” her Daddy started explainin.
Hattie Mae, smellin a good story, asked her daddy to tell her more.
“I will tell you all a fine story just after you all finish up with the chestnuts,” he said.
“Yaaay!” A roar went up from all of the kids and they scrambled to finish as quickly as possible.
Cora Sue went in ahead of everyone else and popped a great huge bowl of that scrumptious snack, popcorn, putting lots of homemade butter on it and plenty of salt! Storytime was one of the mountain folks’ favorite pastimes!
Everybody settled in and got comfortable. Cora Sue passed around bowls of popcorn as her daddy began his story.
Earl started out, “Back when I was knee high to a grasshopper, we would take our hogs, we had about 30 each year, and clip their ears with our special family clipper and then turn them loose in the woods to get fattened up. When it came time to take them to the city to be sold, we could tell which were our hogs by that identifyin’ mark. Man , how they would squeal, it was deafening! It didn’t really hurt them too bad, to get their ears clipped but they wanted to be set free so they could forage for food.”
“Well, back then we had so many chestnut trees, that come the middle of September clear thru till the middle of October, we had to quit going barefooted and wear shoes because there were so many chestnuts on the ground. Why, every 4th tree was a chestnut tree and they were not little, bitty scrawny things either! Many of them were 100 feet tall and 10 feet around! We all had to wear hats because it would rain cockleburrs when you walked into the woods. It was a happy time of year, knowing those old hogs were goin to fetch a pretty penny after fattenin up on the chestnuts! Oh and we et them too! They were so good roasted! But everyday we would start fillin up sacks to take to the city. There were so many that we took wagon load after wagon load down to the railroad depot and we, along with all the other mountain folks were fillin up railroad cars with our sacks. After chestnut season, we bought seed for the next year and all of those things we’d been a hankerin for all year: shoes, sugar, shovels, and all manner of things. My pa was such a character, he’d invite the neighbors over and he played the fiddle and we would have the biggest barn dance to celebrate the chestnut season! My pa would drink all the neighbors under the table with his little brown jug. Oh they tried to catch up to him and at the end of the dancin, we would bed down all of the neighbors on quilts out in the barn, cause they shore couldn’t make it back home.
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The next morning, all of us kids played hide n seek and went cow tippin before the adults had opened their eyes! The moms got the best breakfast for us you ever did see with johnny cakes and fresh sorghum, scrambled eggs, fried country ham and coffee that would make yore eyes roll around in yore head!
Before you knowed it, the neighbors were all loadin up their kids and headin back home and just like that we knew it was time to start roundin up the hogs to take to market. That was no joke. Them hogs was big!! Only the menfolk and the oldest boys could take part in this tussle!”
Hattie Sue yawned really big and laid her head in her sister’s lap. Earl just kept talkin, knowin everybody else was just takin it all in. “One time my brother and I, just tryin to change things up a little, took an old piece of cardboard up to Knob Hill, you all know where that is. It has a gentle slope that ran right under a big old chestnut tree and then a sudden drop off. Well, this here hill was about two feet deep in chestnuts and so slippery when you’d step on the chestnuts that it would take your feet right out from under ye! We decided to capitalize on that slipperyness. After tryin to climb up it for right about half an hour, we both finally got to the top with our cardboard. We set it down, held hands and jumped on that old cardboard right on our behinds and grabbed the edge of the cardboard with our other hands and away we went! Oh we flew like the wind and it about took the breath out of us! However, we came to the drop off and we were both yellin like little girls as we flew through the air! We came down hard and just kept on a goin and if it weren’t for a big pile of hay, we’d still be goin today!! We hit that hay and it thumped the air right out of us both! When our pa came runnin and saw we wuz ok but had shirked our duties to play real dangerous-like, he marched us off to the woodshed and gave us what old Paddy gave the drum…a beatin!”
Hattie Sue opened her eyes a crack and said, “I want to slide down the chestnuts, pa. Can I go?”
Her brothers and sisters all laughed! “She probably would too, pa, if’n there were any more big piles of chestnuts,” Cora Sue said.
Karen asked, “Why were there so many in your day, pa, but we don’t see lots of chestnuts anymore like that? Is it just a tall tale about there being lots of chestnut trees?”
“Oh, no, honey. It's as true as the sky is blue and cows give milk,” her daddy answered.
“What happened?” John asked what they were all thinkin.
Looking around at all of the eager faces and the kids trying to muffle their yawns, their pa said, “Well, seein as how tomorrow is a big shoppin day and the ones left behinds have to get things ready for our still, we will save that question for the next story-tellin. Now you young-uns git yoreselves off to bed.”
They prayed for the night and after a long day, everyone settled down pretty quick.