• Buffalo Creek Farm Recollections

• Bentree recollections; store; sawmills

• Doyle attending school at Independence and Clay

• The Line Creek sawmill

00:00 [DCWv2: Buffalo Creek farm recollections (00:00-07:34)]

Dianne: When you moved from Buffalo Creek to Bentree, do you remember that?

Doyle: I was born up on Buffalo in 1932, and Mom and Daddy moved to Bentree on April Fool’s Day in 1937.

Barbara: I was born in Widen in 1933, and we moved from Widen to Glen in 1937.

Doyle: So, actually, we moved to Bentree, when I lacked about a month of me being about 5 years old.

Mike: Do you remember that at all?

Doyle: A little bit. I remember a little bit about being on the farm up there in Buffalo Creek--not very much of anything. But I remember when we moved to Bentree--I can remember things. Now you are talking about Buffalo. It was Dolly Parton, no it was Loretta Lynn that was raised in the country, or something. Well, when we was born up in Buffalo, we was born in the country. You couldn’t even get an automobile within a “hoot and a holler” of a house. [Hoot, as in the call of an owl. Holler, as in a loud cry or shout.]

Mike: I have been over there a couple of times.

Doyle: Well, I think you might be able to get a truck in there now, or something. But when Mom and Daddy lived up there, Daddy had to park the car way up on top of the hill across from the house and walk down the hill. And if Buffalo Creek wasn’t too high, you could pull off your shoes and wade the Buffalo Creek to the other side. If it was high, you had to walk up the railroad track about a mile or mile-and-a-half and cross the swinging bridge and then come back. There was no roads in there. Period. And when they moved from there (I don’t know how they moved in there), but when they moved [out], they hauled their stuff on a horse and sled around there and carried it across the swinging bridge and loaded it into a railroad car and brought it down to Dundon. Then they loaded it onto a truck, on over to Bentree. But I never did find out much about that place. I asked Damon about it one day. See Grandpa Mullins owned that old place. And I never did find out where he got it or very much about it. But he got it and give’d it to Mom. You see, that was during the depression. Of course, Daddy did not have much of a job, but he worked on the sawmill, and stuff, some, and they moved up there. And of course, Mom and them farmed, and Denvil and them farmed, and it was rough days back in them days. And they stayed, well both me and Darryl was borned over there.

03:03

Mike: Were you born at home?

Doyle: Yes. And I am not even sure there was a doctor there. I was talking to a woman the other day, and it was in the Mullins family how come I talking to her. She is a Nelson. Herman Nelson’s wife, and she--this girl--Herman Nelson told me that her mother, her mother’s name was Chessie. She would have been a first cousin of Mom’s, I believe was right. Just a minute I am not sure if she was a first cousin or second cousin. She told me that her mother helped deliver one of two of us. Which she may have helped deliver me. And then mom helped when a couple of her kids was born. Now to tell you whether or not there was a doctor there, I don’t know. Apparently, there was some doctor signed my birth certificate. But I do not know if they had a doctor there or not, to tell you the truth. See many of the people in those days were born without a doctor. People just had midwives.

[Sidenote: Jerry Nelson, bought this property and is the current owner. Damon, Eddie, and I contacted him in 2012. He took us over to the farm on a 4-wheel type of road.]

Barbara: Was that called Avoca in there?

Doyle: No. Avoca’s on down the railroad track. [Toward Clay] We was up above Avoca.

Barbara: What was the in-between called then?

Doyle: Well, it was just called wilderness then, I reckon. It was…I don’t know if they called it Chestnut Knob in there or something. I got a map of it--well it is on the computer. Allen got me a set of topographical maps, and me and Damon can show you right where the house sat.

Barbara: Well, tell them about the women that come and the sauerkraut.

Doyle: Well, there was a woman…back in them days…. (These people, these days, don’t know what hard times is; they just think they do.) In ‘32 there was not Social Security, there was no welfare. Period. There was none. This Cora Bell Hamrick, Cora Bell Nichols…

[He and Barbara went back and forth--it may have been Keenen]

Anyway, her name was Cora Bell, and she had come down. She lived back up on top of the hill from Mom and them. And she came down there and would want…Mom and them would pickle beans. And I don’t know if you have ever eaten pickled beans, but I don’t like them.

Mike: I have had them.

Doyle: They are sour like, but back in them days you canned or pickled or whatever you done. Well, every few days, every once in a while, you put all these beans in that old churn, and you would weight it down with a rock or something. And every once in a while, you had to clean the brine off. And Cora Bell would come down and ask Mom if she wanted her to clean her pickled bean jar for a mess of pickled beans. She would do all that and get a quart of pickled beans to eat and go back home--and then you got something to eat. There were a lot of people that did not have very much to eat. And I can remember her coming down to do that.

Barbara: Did Phyllis and Freda ride the train?

Doyle: I don’t know whether Freda did or not, but Denvil and Phyllis--they walked from the house down across that swinging bridge and caught either the train or that Bradley car, that they called it. The old man Bradley had a rail [passenger] car, and they rode it down to Dundon, and they walked over to the high school. That is how they went back and forth to high school. I believe we moved from Buffalo maybe the year that Freda was in 8th grade. When we came to Bentree she started there at Clay [High School].

Mike: How many rooms were in that house? Do you remember?

Doyle: I don’t know if it were three or four. It was a two-story house. But before Daddy moved there, this old man Worth Davison lived there. I did not know, but Damon was telling me that he lived there and about all the windows was broke out of it. And the paper or something nailed over the windows and stuff, because they could not get the glass and stuff to put in there. So, most of the windows was nailed up, and when Grandpa give’d it to Mom and them, they had a time of getting Worth to move out because he did not have nowhere to go. And when they moved in, the house was in pretty bad shape. And they got it and fixed it up, putting window glass in it and some stuff and they lived there about 6 years, I reckon.

07:34 [DCWv2: Bentree recollections; store; sawmills (07:34-19:04)]

Then things started opening up some. Well, Grandpa had gotten a hold of Mom, or talked to her or whatever, and he had that little store there at Bentree. And his brother had been running it, or something, and he wanted Mom to come over and run that store and keep his books for him and stuff. So, she came over and worked in the store and kept his books…and I think got $50 a month for it. And Daddy still worked on the sawmill for a while. I think Denvil went to work at Alloy in 1941, I believe it was. Then Daddy went down there in about 1942. Then Denvil went in the service in about ‘42, wasn’t it? [Denvil enlisted 5/15/1943.] Then, Daddy worked down at the plant. Of course, it is hard to understand, unless you have been through something like that. He was the kind of fella…Daddy did not spend much money. You know that. But I think going through what he went through, he did not want to go through it again. So, he didn’t waste no money. He would save what he got [from Union Carbide], and they would live out of what the store made.

09:40

But during the time he worked at the plant, he saved quite a bit of money. He had quite a bit of money saved. A lot of people would say, why don’t you do this or that. But no! When you had seven kids, and you did not know where they was going to get breakfast at. And then you did get a job, you tried and laid something up for the next time. I reckon that is where a lot of it was at. And you just don’t, some people just don’t get out and throw their money away. Now some people now can get a credit card, they think we will live today and not worry about tomorrow, you know.

10:28

Dianne: Did you live in the store when you moved to Bentree?

Doyle: No. We showed a picture of that shanty a four room house up the hollow, just a little ways from the store.

Mike: I remember those houses. They must have been rental property a while later.

Doyle: No. Grandpa Mullins, you see, he had been over there, and he had a sawmill over in Sangamore. Had it at three or four places. Back in them days, they take a sawmill out there and just set it up and sawed out a bunch of timber. Then they moved it on down the hollow because they did not have trucks and stuff. Most of the time they pulled the logs in by horses instead of trucking. So, they had already had the mill set up down there two or three times down that creek. They had it on down there, down you know where Pat had that mill at.

Mike: I remember that.

Doyle: Now, I believe that is where the mill was at when Daddy moved over there.

Barbara: I can remember when you [Mike] were little calling it the mill saw. I can remember you saying that.

Doyle: Daddy did the sawing for them. And along about that time before Daddy went to Alloy, Gordon had a sawmill over in Leatherwood, and he sawed over there for him. And then he got a job at Alloy. And yet it was about the time that Denvil went in the service. Daddy might have been working at Alloy when they bought that place there at the mouth of the hollow.

12:16

There was an old lady named Ella(?) O’Dell and her husband was Clem. He had been in WW I, and I think he had died. His tombstone is up there on the hill, I believe he died in the ‘30’s. He was buried in a little cemetery up behind that house up there. And he had one son. I guess it was all the children he had, the son wasn’t by his last wife. Wasn’t by Ella.

His son lived in Louisiana; I think. Well, she did not wanted to stay there anymore. She wanted to go--she was already an old woman. She was going to move in with her daughter up here to Tioga, I guess it was. And she wanted to sell it, and Daddy and them bought it...a big price for what they got. They give them $1,500 for it. It was 7 acres and the house. And that old store building, you remember, it was there. [The cancelled checks are included here.]

13:23

Mike: Now that old building, at one time was the store. Right?

Doyle: It was a store there. Old man Clem O’Dell had a store there. Then there wasn’t nothing in it until Daddy and them come down there. They made two houses out of it or two dwellings at each end of it.

Mike: Now didn’t Mom and Dad live in…

Doyle: They lived in one of them. They lived in one of them, and I believe Sam Moore lived in the other side of them. And then Leck O’Dell lived in it for a while, and I can remember four or five people living there.

Mike: Well, I must have been born about that time.

Doyle: No...

Barbara: Well, Grandpa and Grandma Mullins was living in it the time we got married, the second Grandma Mullins.

Doyle: The little white house straight across the creek from Mom and Daddy’s belonged to Bus McGraw. Now Denvil and them lived in that and I don’t know if they lived in that before they moved in the old store building. I believe they did. Then they moved over in that old store building and lived there until they built that house down there. But Daddy and them, I know when they was talking about it that …you see Mrs. O’Dell had a deal with the son that was still living. Anyway, she had asked him about it. He said, well, he wanted a $1,000 of it--for his part of it. And she thought he was a little bit high, or something, and she said she would just take $500 for her part. That made $1,500. I have the checks up there, where they wrote the checks. I believe they wrote two different checks. It is in an album here, the checks that they wrote. I still have them up there. They wrote one for $1, 000 to the son. I think he lived in…

Mike: So, when did the other store building across the road come into existence?

Doyle: Well, now over where the filling station was? That was built before Grandpa and them went over there. It used to be a little beer joint at first, and I really don’t know too much about it. That piece of land in there--they put a store in it or added some on the back of it and put a store in there. That was when mom went over there to work. They added a warehouse on the side of it down there. I think Gordon built that house; you know where he lived at. Where Gordon’s house was. And they had four or five little one room houses that set over next to the creek, just a one room bedroom or something. They would rent them to people, I guess, who was traveling. I can remember, I know at least four of them, and there was still two of them there for a long time. And they apparently rented them. He had a Delco system, a generator that generated DC power. And he had a refrigerator that ran on dc power, and then they had lights. That was something to see with electric lights--because electric didn’t come up there you see—oh. it was, I believe it was during or after WW II. During World War II or something they started putting… Roosevelt was one that got it started. I don’t know it…I think we still lived up to Sagamore before Daddy and them bought that house down there from Mrs. O’Dell. I can remember they came up there and put the stakes down for the power poles, and the guidelines and stuff. I can remember the people come along, before long, and put the power poles in and then they put power in them houses. They had wiring down under the ceiling, you know, and you just had a light in each room. And one thing and another. It was really bright lights when you turned them on. But that was way back in the early 40’s…but I was thinking it was after World War II, but it must have been a little while before. I guess it was along, you see Roosevelt did a lot of stuff. He had that CCC and stuff that people was in. They must have put money out or something for the power companies to run power into the rural areas. It must have been in the late 30’s or 40’s that they put power up there.

19:04 [DCWv2: Doyle attending school at Independence and Clay (19:04-21:44)]

Mike: You must have gone to school at Independence and then Clay for high school?

Doyle: I went to Independence and then Clay for high school. Barbara went to Clay. Barbara lived over there at Glen. She rode what was 32 miles to Clay, one way. Glen is actually, if you go up there to Independence, and go across that Coon Ridge--then about six or seven miles, you come down over there to what they call, well it is called Spruce Fork. Then you go there, you have to go all the way to Queens Shoals and back to Clay. So, it wasn’t actually too far from our house to Barbara’s house after they built a road through there. But before it was built, the road was almost impassable--the Bentree side to over there, you know. But they built a pretty good road through there in the late ‘40’s or something. But she went to Clay. I guess she was plumb on the end of that bus run from over there, and I was on the end of it from this way. It was quite a little distance away going that a way.

Dianne: Did you go to school with Janet’s parents, the Wilsons?

Barbara: I think they are a bit older than we were.

Doyle: Now, Carl Wilson isn’t a whole lot older than I am; he is a little bit older.

Barbara: I believe that Carl Wilson was an undertaker before you and I ever got out of school. So, he was at Clay Funeral Home.

Doyle: Yes, but the other fellow, Jack Waters--his wife was the secretary up at the high school when we was there.

Barbara: You will remember Carl Wilson got into it with Murray over the Clay Funeral Home, and then he established his own then. Daddy knew Carl.

21:44 [DCWv2: The Line Creek sawmill (21:44-23:47)]

Mike: Do you remember anything about that sawmill?

Doyle: Yeah, I remember the sawmill some. I remember the one they had up at Line Creek better than any of them. Of course, I was getting up to a pretty good age.

Mike: Where is Line Creek?

Doyle: Well, Line Creek (if you are coming from Summersville) is probably about 15 miles. Do you know where Otter Creek school was? Well, it is this side of Otter Creek from here. Otter Creek school is about a mile up there. The road turns to the left up there and they call it Line Creek. “L I N E” Creek.

[Barbara inserted that on the map it is Lyon. Doyle corrected her that that is Lyonsville, and that it was different than Line Creek.]

Mike: Did you ever work on that mill?

Doyle: No, I wasn’t old enough to work on it any. I think Damon did some. I would go up at stay at Grandpa’s sometimes in the summer, a week or two, and I would be up there around the mill. But I remember it pretty well. Now they was sawing in there during World War II. So, I would have been 11 or 12 years old or something. Then I worked on the mill when Bus McGraw had a sawmill there above Mom and Daddy. I used to work on it when I was a boy. I think Damon worked for Grandpa at different times on the mill.

23:47