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Clara (Mrs. Zeb) Crisp, 55 years old when recorded in 1939, was a resident of Hazel Creek in Swain County, North Carolina. She was literate but it is not known how much formal education she had. She was a farm housewife.

[transcripption copyrigh Michael Montgomery and Paul Reed, 2017][C = Clara Crisp; I = Interviewer Joseph Hall]

C: The wife of Zeb Crisp, Clara Crisp my name, and you want my initials too? my initials?

I: Could I get your, could I get your name?

C: Fifty-five years old.

I: Where were you born"

C: Graham County, and you want me to tell about the sewing?

I: xx.

C: Well, uh back when I was growing up the first sewing I done I was about thirteen years old C: I guess, and I sewed with my fingers and made sheets, pillow cases, and all kinds of bed clothes with my fingers, I never sewed any on a machine till I was nearly grown, I guess about seventeen years ve- teen years old, and we didn’t can any and my grandmother didn’t, she always dried her stuff up till I was nearly grown, she done her cooking mostly on the fire, never had any stove till I was little, and she could bake cakes, she was just the nicest, one of the best old-timey cooks.

I: How did she do her baking?

C: She baked in a oven, she done her baking in a oven, she baked cakes, I don’t know what number of cakes she’s baked in an oven.

I: And how many xx xx xx xx placed in the fireplace?                      

C: Yes, she, she baked them on the fire, take out her coals and put her oven down on the fire and she’d bake them and heat the oven as she went, you know, to bake her cakes, she’d bake her cornbread in, in pones, she’d take it up and bake her potatoes, and puy sometimes her family wasn’t any gone, she’d uh put her cake or bread on one side, the potatoes in the other, and that, that’s most of the way we lived in my younger days, and the way my grandmother lived, what wasyy they you going to say?

I: You said that uh you didn’t do any canning when you were young, your mother didn't do either?

C: No, she uh didn't, we didn’t do any canning un-, until I was grown, nearly grown, before I saw any canning.

I: What kind of stuff would you dry?

C: Uh fruits and dry apples, and uh blackberries, they didn’t dry any other kind of berries, and, and that’s about all the dried stuff we had that I remember.

I: Did they dry beans?

C: No, well they’d dry their beans, yes, they dried leather britches beans, what a thing to call it, I suppose I’ve got some now.

I: How long do you dry the beans?

C: Well, I dry mine in the sun, my grandmother dried hers uh on a string, hung them up in the porch or around the fireplace and dried them, and she’d dry pumpkin that way, and I don’t dry any pumpkin myself but I still dry the leather britches beans, that’s what they called them then, I suppose that’s what you want?

I: Yeah.

And I don’t know of anything else now that would be any important.

I: Would you tell about how your grandmother would bake cakes?

C: Oh yes, those was pound cakes.

I: Oh, pound cakes?

C: And the way she baked her cakes now at, at Christmas time, times they hard then, they didn’t have uh, they couldn’t afford this stuff all the time, and the way they baked them at Christmas time, she’d uh, she’d take a dozen of eggs and a pound of sugar and a pound of butter, and she’d make her pound cakes and pour them in a pan with a, with a pound cake pans they called them, they had a spout run up that way and poured this dough right around this lid, and hit would raise to the top with a hole in the middle, and she’d get her a w- wild leaf, flower or something or another and decorate the top of that, usually uh holly berries, and, or else she’d stick a large piece of candy down in it, put them on the Christmas tree for her old friends, and, and they’d eat them and laugh and talk and enjoy theirselves through Christmas, and that’s about all they is to the pound cake except a little flavoring she’d use.

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C: Well, they enjoyed it a lot better because they enjoyed it in a religious way, and these days we j- enjoy it to have a good time mostly, you know, that’s all of the world, and they just enjoyed theirselves, I’ve heared her tell about the, having log rollings, you know, back in her raising up, and after she started raising a family, they’d have these log rollings, they’d all go and enjoy themself.