Al Morris, Kirklands Creek, near Bryson City, North Carolina
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Al Morris was 67 years old when recorded in 1939. He was living in Deep Creek, Swain County, North Carolina. He had three to four years of formal education and worked as a farmer, logger, and cattle and hog raiser.
[transcripption copyrigh Michael Montgomery and Paul Reed, 2017]
Well, we went on then, thir-, thirty, it's been about thirty or thirty-five year ago, we was out there and the dogs had treed a bunch of coons and lay by them [=the trees] at night, [we] clim the tree the next morning and set the tree afire and got five coon, went on then the next, that evening back in the back of Round Top and catched three more and killed a big turkey gobbler, and it's been a good long while, I forgot the most of it, we stayed out there about six weeks, me and a fellow Smith from Virginia, we caught about thirty-five coon, and I don’t know uh how many polecats, and caught a otter while we was up there and killed one small deer and caught several fish, I don’t know exactly how many, that was in, that was in the wintertime, and then uh, while we was up in there our dogs got after a gang of coons and run them in on the head of Reagans Creek, Reagans Prong, we got four out of that bunch, oh I couldn’t tell the possums we did catch around that Bryson place there while we was camped there, so that’s about all I know of that, caught a heap of fish in them mountain streams, always enjoyed fishing, didn’t use to think I’d done any good at all without catch as many as a hundred and fifty or two hundred a day, and I’ve been in several little bear fights, I don’t know as I ever killed one myself, but I’ve been along when they was several of them killed, and killed one or two deer was all the ever, all the deer I ever killed, so, if, if it was so, so I could go hunting again I’d like to go, I can’t.
[FASTER HIGHER PITCH THAN FOREGOING] / Disc 094a
Well, it’s been about six year ago when they was opening up Forney Creek, building the road up there, the CCs, I was a-working for them with a team, might have fished a little, I don’t know, we found a bee tree one evening, some boys wanted to cut it and did cut it, I reckon, and I told them all I wanted out of it was a little bucket of honey, they’d ch- slipped out a pitcher out of the superintendent’s office, and I went back down a-Sunday, they took it up to where I was camped and cleaned their honey up and they had about seventy pound, I guess, and probably a little more, and I slipped the pitcher back that they’d took from the superintendent and took him some honey, he looked at it awhile and took out his knife and eat a bite or two of it, a few days after that Mister John Sherrill come along and asked some of them who cut the tree and they didn’t tell him, and John said he guessed that’s been that old Al Morris that done that, so I don’t reckon he ever found out who cut the tree, and the, I found another’un or two while I was there, and I cut one of them, and we eat the honey while we was at Sherrill’s, and that’s about all I know about bee hunting.
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[SLOWER THAN PRECEDING, SAME SPEED AS FIRST MORRIS] / Disc 094b
About thirty year ago there was me and four or five other fellows went to the head of Deep Creek, the left-hand prong to camp, we was bear hunting, we got out that evening looking for bear sign, and me and one of my first cousins found a coon a-lapping a chestnut tree and we killed hit, some of the boys, the other boys that evening killed a about a threeyear-old deer, two-spiked buck, and we built up a big fire out of some green beech, hung that deer up and got him to barbecuing, and the boys among them all eat it up that night, eat the whole deer up, so we had the coons for breakfast the next morning and had a bear fight but the dogs lit across the mountain and went into Tennessee, didn’t do no good a-bear hunting, that’s about all that.