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Bert Crisp, 47 years old, was from the community of Tow String Creek in Swain County, North Carolina, when recorded in 1939. He worked as a CCC foreman.

[transcripption copyrigh Michael Montgomery and Paul Reed, 2017]

[C = Bert Crisp; M = Interviewer Bill Moore]

M: Mister Crisp, tell us about that there CC camp on Mingus’s Creek.

C: Well, uh we went to work there about nineteen thirty-four I believe it was, worked there about two year.

M: What kind of work did you do up there?

C: They uh cut timber, chopped old dead timber and cleaned up and fill up the old main public highway, and dressed off the banks on the new highway.

M: About how many boys was in that camp?

C: About two hundred.

M: Were they Northern boys?

C: Yes.

M: Where’d that camp go to from Mingus’s Creek?

C: Went from Mingus’s Creek to Deep Creek.

M: You know how long it stayed at Deep Creek?

C: About six months I believe it was.

M: Go ahead and tell us about your rating you got there at Deep Creek.

C: Well, I been there about a couple of months and got the rate thirty-six, the next month or so I got the rating ...

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M: Mister Crisp, was you born and raised in Graham County?

C: No sir.

M: Let’s go ahead and tell us your full name and where you was borned and raised.

C: My name’s Bert Crisp, I was borned in Graham County, two year old when my father left there and come to Mingus.

M: Well, tell us about that old mill on Mingus Creek, Mister Crisp.

C: Well, that old mill was there far back as I can remember.

M: Who built that old mill, do you know?

C: Uh they told me it’s Don Early and uh Stephen Ijams is the one built it, Lon Floyd had it, had them to build it.

M: About how old are you now, Mister Crisp?

C: Forty-seven year old.

M: You have a pretty good-sized family?

C: Eh, just four of us.

M: How long you been a-living on the Tow String, Mister Crisp?

C: I’ve been living on Tow String a couple of year, well, I’ve owned this place about ten year.

M: You have in a big crop around here, don’t you?

C: Yeah, pretty fair crop.

M: How did this creek get its name up here?

C: Well, this creek used to be uh called Davidson Branch, an old man moved in here back years ago, he put one year a tow factory, and uh from that on it went by the name of Tow String.

M: How many families live on this creek now, do you know?

C: There are about nineteen families there, [ain’t] they?

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C: Twen-, twenty-three families.

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C: I don't know.

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Why, Eddie Conner uh planted this walnut in the Big Cove, and it growed up to be a tree, and he cut it and had it sawed and made his coffin out of it, and he'd get in his coffin and had his picture made whe-, whe-, when he’s in his coffin and, he was buried in that coffin.