MEMORY OF MY GRANDFATHER JAMES McKINNEY

Great-grandfather James McKinney was a farmer, blacksmith, and furniture, cabinet -maker. Also he built wagons, plow stocks and other tools used by his neighbors and many friends. His place was four miles from my father's home in Lattimore, Cleveland County, N.C.

I remember vividly and pleasantly that I spent a portion of each summer, after school was out, at the farm until I was about 18 years of age, and Gandpa's death in 1914. He was 96 when he passed away, and was buried in a coffin he himself built-I remember him working on it-and carried to the cemetery on a two-horse wagon he also built.

My early recollection is full of charm and so is the memory of the time I spent with Grandfather and two great aunts, his daughters.

It was a heavenly place for a boy. The house was a large two-story edifice, built of pine lumber without a knot in the whole house. The planks were dressed by hand and the nails were nails made in the blacksmith shop down the road a short distance from the house. The framing was fastened together with wooden pegs, according to Grandfather. Beside, and joining the blacksmith shop was a woodworking shop where furniture, wagons and other things were manufactured.

I remember marveling at the wooden wheels and pulleys in that shop all made by hand, even cogwheels were of wood. Grandfather also built a large water wheel to run the grist mill. Another thing that always intrigued me was a fan that he built or put together, using an old grandfather clock rigged up over the dining room table. When wound it would run for about two hours during the meal time. At that point and time no fans were being manufactured, as we have today.

Getting back to the house: It was a big lovely home with a wide porch all the way around the building. On entering the front door you found yourself in a spacious hallway with a door opening to the back porch. On the left you enter the dining room and a big wide fireplace where four-foot logs flaming. What a warm feeling. At meal time my aunts would wind up the fan and the sumptuous meals-well it makes me cry to think of them: fried chicken, with gravy, ham and eggs, roast pig, turkey, squirrels, rabbits. Partridges, biscuits, hot corn pone, corn on the cob, butter beans, tomatoes, peas, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, butter milk, sweet milk, watermelon, cantaloupe, all fresh from the farm and garden. Apple pie, peach pie, pumpkin pie, apple dumplings, peach cobbler-I can't remember the rest. There was always a goodly supply of canned goods, dried apples, preserves, jellies of all kinds, cured meats in the smokehouse, home-made molasses, everything you could think of to eat, they had plenty of everything.

McKINNEY MILL, NEAR ELLENBORO, NC
Photograph contributed by Vernie McKinney Wilson, Ellenboro, North Carolina

While on the subject of eating, I know how to tell when a watermelon is ripe without plugging it. I know how inviting it is when it lies there on the table, the other children gathered around, their mouths watering. I can see the halves lying there on the table displaying the red meat and black seeds. I know how one looks behind a long slice of that melon and I know how it feels, for I have been there.

From the hall a stairway led to the second floor-and well I remember that stairs. When I was a little boy, I remember sticking my head through this banister and it got stuck. My mother and aunt came running when they heard me screaming. They tried in vain to extract me from my imprisonment. I thought I was there to stay. My yelling and kicking up a racket brought Grandpa running. He had to remove one of the banisters to get me out. I kept clear of banisters from that time on.

On the right of the hall was a big bedroom and then on the end of the house was a family room with another fireplace. I can see with perfect clearness the big corded bed with a trundle bed underneath in one corner, with a spinning wheel in another. The vast fireplace piled high with logs on a winter night with flaming oak logs from whose ends a sugary sap bubbled out. I can see the woods and I remember going with Grandpa to gather herbs. I can hear the rustle of the leaves as we walked through the fallen leaves. I can see the clusters of wild grapes and muscadines, blackberries, hazelnuts and persimons. I remember the taste of them and the smell.

Grandfather James was a kind and gentle man who loved all of hi children and grandchildren. He roasted peanuts, popped popcorn, cracked black walnuts and hickory nuts. Plenty of hazel nuts and chestnuts, all grown on the farm. And he joined us as we filled our stomachs until we had the bellyache.

The house stood in the center of a large yard with a split-railing fence on the back. The fence enclosed a huge garden. I'd say about two acres of land. Here all kinds of vegetables were grown. Back of the garden was a vast orchard, where those big red june apples were grown. I remember bringing them to Lattimore where we sold them to customer's of my father's blacksmith shop, .50 per bushel. There were peach trees, cherry trees, grapes damsels, pears, figs. In the corner of the yard stood several walnut and hickory trees.

Grandfather gathered herbs and manufactured medicines fo the treatment of the sick, as he was somewhat of a country doctor, although he was not a physician, most of the neighbors looked to him for their medical remedies, And he was a good doctor.

The front yard was surrounded by a box-bush hedge, the largest box bushes I have ever seen. It took many years to grow that hedge. On the second floor was three large bedrooms, in one of them you generally found at least one bed-quilt in the process of being finished. In one room was a large cloth loom, where many yards of cloth was spun and sewing machine of an early make where the popular home-spun Jeans were made by my aunts.

Out under a row of cherry trees Grandfather had a row of bee hives. He spent a lot of time with his bees and they never seemed to sting him at any time. He would handle them and talk to them like they were pets. They were Grandpa's friends. But I never was able to make friends with his bees. Must have been that I never considered bees as any friends of mine. Grandfather would sit in his rocking chair under the cherry trees and let the bees crawl over him. I remember one time when he was taking fresh honey from the hive when he gave me a frame of honey to eat and the warm honey made me terribly ill. I ate too much. Another time when I was a little boy wearing a dress, I tried to hem up the bees that were in a bushel measure. It was a wooden tub affair. By spreading my little dress around the rim of the container I had the bees captured in the tub. But not for long! One of those fellows wanted out and he hit me in the right place to move me in a hurry off that seat-another thing that I never tried again.

Among the other duties assigned to Grandpa James was that of road overseer. There were no highway department or county maintenance in those days. There were no paved roads in all of Cleveland County. Every man of age was required to work on the public roads two days each month. If anyone was unable to fulfill his public duties he could hire someone to work in his place. The wages were 75 cents to $1.00 for a 10-hour day's work. I remember working on the roads in place of a neighbor who was sick at the time. Our equipment was a pick and shovel. There was no playing around, taking time out to smoke or rest. We were there to work, and we worked, from sun-up until sundown. In order to keep the road from becoming a washed out gully, Grandpa would have the men dig a ditch across the road with a wide terrace made from dirt from the ditch. The terrace also served as a good place for a team of horses, or mules to rest on hills too steep to pull a heavy wagon.

I remember accompanying Grandpa on a trip to Shelby, the county seat. There were no paved roads in Shelby then. And I remember what a demonstration of anger from the citizens when they began taking up the big beautiful oak trees that lined the streets of Shelby to make room for the widening of streets and building concrete sidewalks. It was a sight to see for a boy, the big steam rollers that smoothed the pavement. Little did anyone think that some day the entire county road system would be paved, with not a buggy in sight. I remember the automobile was a rarity. They had to be stored in winter time because of bad road conditions. You never made a short trip without a flat, you bragged about it for weeks after.

The first improved roads in Cleveland was macadamized roads. About 1915 I worked with an engineer employed by the County to supervise the construction and improvement of public roads. I operated a road grader pulled by eight big mules. At the time I was 18 years of age.

Many times during my visits to the farm I would sit and listen to the stories about the war between the states. Grandpa James was a great story teller and the children never tired of listening to the many experiences of Grandpa James.

I had two grandfathers in the Civil war: Grandfather Abram Hamrick, my mother's father and Grandfather James McKinney. My grandfather John Webb McKinney, my father's father was too young when the war was in progress. However, he also had many interesting stories to tell us younguns.

I remember one story about John Webb McKinney. The railroad being built through Cleveland County was interrupted by the war and ended at Rutherford County Line about two miles from the home of my father, Robert Elam McKinney was reared, the farm of my grandfather. When the first passenger trains began to run, Grandfather decided it would be an experience to ride on one of those things. He inquired as to what it would cost him and was told it would be 3 cents per mile. He took one horse along while riding another and tied him to a pine sapling about five miles down the track. He rode back to the station and boarded the next train with the intention of getting off the train at about where he tied his horse. However, he paid his fare and told the conductor about where he wanted to get off the train, as he only wanted 15 cents worth of ride. I guess the conductor was a good man and wanted to be good to his passengers, so he took grandpa all the way to Shelby. He walked back to where his horse was tied to find the animal had just about pawed up by the roots the tree to which he was tied. He mounted his horse and rode home, tired and hungry, happy and wiser.

My grandfather Hamrick, father of my mother, gave Papa and Momma a farm on Brushy Creek in Cleveland County, and while we lived in Lattimore, I and my brother Van, purchased a little red mule and a one-horse wagon that Grandfather James had built some time during his lifetime. This was after Grandpa James had died. That wagon was an awkward looking thing and didn't exactly compare with the more popular Rock Hill built wagons just coming into use generally throughout the county. So we decided to get rid of it in the expectation that Papa would buy a new one for us. We were assigned to a job of clearing a rocky hillside of rocks. We turned the mule with his head down the steep hill and loaded that wagon with rocks piled as high as would stay on the bed of the wagon. But when we was ready to go the wagon was mired down in the ground until the mule couldn't budge it. We unloaded most of the rocks and pulled out heading down hill and suddenly turning left to make the wagon turn over or break the wheel down. But the wagon just wouldn't break down. We failed in our effort to destroy it. Some time later it was in a fire that destroyed my father's blacksmith shop in Lattimore. I mention this to let you know that when Grandpa James McKinney built something something, there was no way of breaking it down. They were built to last.

I could write a book on the things that I remember about our family. But the space here can be more useful to publisher of this work.

Maybe I will write a book some time on my own family, my father and mother, brothers and sisters.

Clyde S. McKinney

 (It is unfortunate for us all that Clyde Spurgeon McKinney did not accomplish the task of writing that book)