Aden Carver, Bradley Fork, Smokemont, North Carolina
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Aden Carver was 93 years old when recorded in 1939. He was from Bradley Fork in Swain County, North Carolina. He was self-educated and worked as a farmer, carpenter, millwright, stonemason, and Baptist breacher.
[transcripption copyrigh Michael Montgomery and Paul Reed, 2017]
C: Are you ready to begin? I was a boy about ten to twelve year old, and my father sent me out in the evening to hunt the sheep, and as I come in walking along a ridge, the first thing I knowed a panther jumped right out in front of me, he wasn’t over ten foot from me, he'd place his feet and schlap his tail, just like he was a-going to jump on me, I backed off, I guess twenty foot, maybe further, and got me a rock, standing there with a rock in my hand looking right at him, expecting him to get me at any time, and I made a kind of a move, and he started just as straight to me as he could, I throwed up my rock, and he turned just like he was a-going to cut me off betwixt me and the house, I went down that mountain, a steam car couldn’t have caught me, and I never looked back, the fencing wasn’t in my way nor nothing, and I jumped out into the field, run out half way of the field, and I looked back, and I seed no panther, I don’t know where he went, but he was a main big'un.
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C: I was borned in a half a mile of where I’m a-talking this morning, it was Haywood County, and now it’s Swain County, and just after the war a few year I was married, I was married at the age of twenty-two year, and I went to the state of Tennessee, and I was there a, quite a while, something like twenty-six or seven year, and I went in that area to trade, and I went into the milling business, mill company, and I learned my trade, and I, they moved me to a mill on the waters of Flat Creek, Tennessee, Sevier County, and there I stayed a year, and I never was in such a law-breaking country in life, it was no count, and I decided to leave, and another thought struck my mind and I still stayed, and I went to work to put up a church there, and in seven years' time, I had a churchas high as twenty drunk women the same day there, and all the men that broke the law you wanted, and I left that country, when I left and went back to my old home, and a man of that country tried to persuade me back, that they’d buy me a farm and give it to me if I’d go back, but I never felt it was my duty to go back, I come back to North Carolina to take care of my father, the old fellow had got old, he couldn’t do nothing, and I stayed with him till he passed out, I still stayed in the state of North Carolina, worked, and finally I lost the old lady seven year ago last January, and I’m just alone, I’ve reached the age of ninety-three, three months, a few day, and yet able to go on and get about, getting along a-reasonable, you might say, while I was in the last year of our war, and I never called out no pension, I w- went through by my work, and a man will try, they can all get through by being honest and telling the truth and doing their work right, I’ve never been out of a job till I’ve got so up in age that I can’t keep up a job, and I’ve quit and come in, that’s all I’ll tell of that.
H: Tell us about uh your drawing CCC pay working on the Mingus Mill.
C: What?
H: Tell about drawing CCC pay and working on the Mingus Mill.
C: I went down to a mill down here, the Mingus Mill, the CC, they got me to sign up, they, it was a mill that I helped build, Benjamin built it, and the boss man couldn’t get it into his head right, and they got me to go there, and I went there and worked a month or maybe a little more, and the government paid me for that, that was more money than I ever made in life on any job, and I’m proud that I helped set up the job again, to work, for a man to understand that we have to live by our work,
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C: I uh, first located on the Little East Fork, in Sevier County, five mile above Sevierville, I was there a few years, and we undertook to build a mill eleven mile above on the head of Flat Creek, in Bird Settlement, I went there, I went to work, and they were terrible work about, and they deviled me to death there, and I worked on there till we got the mill up, started, and I decided I’d leave that place, wasn’t a suitable place to raise a family, I’ve saw as high as ten to twenty drunk women the same day, and men in proportion, and I studied over one night, got up the next morning, I says “Martha, I'm going to stay here till I have to go out,” and I went to right after that I beginned with the association, and in seven year I had a Baptist church built there, and that country was all sobered down and seemed like a different country, and I left, come to my n- native land, and when I went back over to visit, they offered to buy me a place and give it to me if I’d come back, I axed them “what have I done for this country?” and they said, “you’ve done more than ever man that ever lived here, we’ve got a good civilized country and a good church.”
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C: The first song I'm a-going to sing to you is an old Primitive Baptist
[SINGING - UNINTELLIGIBLE]
C: Going to sing a song that I sung when the old lady was on her death bed, I wouldn’t do, a took a thousand and six worlds for her, ah but she’s gone, she called to me to sing her a song, and I moved up to her head and I sung her this song, and the song is this.