Herbert Stephenson, Saunook, Haywood County, North Carolina
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Herbert Stephenson, 25 years old, was living in Saunook, in Haywood County, North Carolina when recorded in 1939. He had four to five years of formal education and worked as a farmhand.
[transcripption copyrigh Michael Montgomery and Paul Reed, 2017]
[S = Herbert Stephenson; H = Millard Hill]
S: All right, then, xx, I’ll tell you a story, it’s about hunting then.
H: Go to it.
S: I started to hunting one day, I saw three turkey sitting up on a limb, and I didn’t have but one bullet in my gun and I shot at them, I missed the turkeys, I hit the limb, I split it, and they, their toe stuckright down through the limb, and they riz and flew across the river there and I started across to get them, my boot got so full of fish I pulled a button off my britches and shot a rabbit over on the bank.
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H: Well, Hub, how you getting along now?
S: Oh pretty good, I guess, I’ve been a-farming a little along, I planted some turnip seed and planted them in a little old lot, you know, had a acre of ground fenced off, they’s one of them seed come up, it growed and it, it, we had a rail fence around it and that turnip, you know, it growed till it bursted that fence down.
H: Well, over in Kentucky, where I come from, we’ve been a-making a solid copper pot, and the pot’s so big around, the people on one side can’t even hear the other’un’s hammer.
S: Well, I’ll be dog gone, what are they making such a pot as that for?
H: Cook that turnip in, man.
S: Well, I’ll be dag gum.
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S: Red, I went a-bear hunting oncet on the Fourth of July, and I went down to the branch where one had a been a-using, I seen him a-coming down to the branch to get water, so I raised my gun and he didn’t stop, I raised my gun again and he didn’t stop, so I broke and run, the bear took after me, he run me over a ridge and down the holler and over a ridge and down in another holler to the river, I hit the ice on the river and scooted across the river, and the bear hit the ice and broke his neck.
H: You don’t mean to tell me the river’s froze over in July?
S: The bear run me from the Fourth of July till December.