Chapter 3
BIG FIGHT ON SANDY
R: That’sthenameofthesong… B: JohnCogarmadethatsongup…. M: He made some of them. R: Put some men to sleep and dream the gnats and the fleas . . . . J: Maggie, that’s good M: Huh? B: I said John Cogar made part of that song. M: I made a lot of money a’singing songs. D: Have yuh? M: Why, gosh sakes. I use to make pretty near five dollars a song. I could sing good though then. D: Where, where was that? M: But I cain’t . . . well, right at home. People’d come there to hyear me sing. Huh? D: Is that right?...
read moreIF THE SHOE FITS
S: Well, me and Uncle Edn started up, he lived at White Oak, now he said, I ‘s down there and stayed overnight, ” ‘Pon my honor,” he said, “I have a notion to go home with you in the mornin'” Well I said “do please Uncle Edn by George go” and he had a, he had a pair a canvas shoes, Edn did, and he said “I b’lieve I’ll wear my canvas shoes.” Well, I said he wore about the same, about nine or ten. Got on up there about, well, got up there about the Needle Branch, what they...
read moreAND BOYS, ITS A WONDER THEY HADN’T A’KILLED HER
S. Ever’ time she come up I had to take her to the spring, and it ‘uz, it ‘s a half a mile, it ‘s way further from here, I’ll take yuh to that spring sometime, uh, and show yuh where it was, an’ the spot an’ ever’thing. Uh, you know us kids, them days an’ times when we was kids a’growin’ up, we didn’t you know, we never had no such thing as good apples or anything like that now back there. . . . So there was a apple tree up on the hill where we used to live, after we,...
read moreTHE ‘PUNK’ AT THE CAMP
S: Well, they gener’lly make songs yuh know. You take all them ol’ woodhicks, they would . . . they liked you, they wadn’ nuthin’ they’d, but what they’d do to you. There wouldn’ be but one thing . . .they liked to devil yuh you see. That’s one thing they liked to do was tuh devil yuh. . . but now, you get at one uh their plates, an’ they called the boy, say it was me that was there, called me a punk . . . and you get at one uh their plates, an’ hit was a hard matter tuh find your...
read moreJOKER JESS
S: An’ then they made a song, but I don’t know it now. Come all you hicks and lumber men Come listen unto me A story I will tell you of A logger’s treachery. In the thirty first day of last September In the days of ’85 We left the camp with merry hearts And spirits all alive. But little thoughts for Joker Jess That sent that [?] tree [?] (Sherman) [?] (Maggie) We found that we had lost in him A noble-hearted friend. Too quick, too quick his comrades [?] That sent the [?] tree. That crushed his body to the earth And set...
read more