Aaron Swanninger, Cades Cove, Blount County, Tennessee
Aaron Swanninger was from Cades Cove, in Blount County, Tennessee.
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[transcripption copyrigh Michael Montgomery and Paul Reed, 2017]
[S = Aaron Swanninger; I = Interviewer Joseph Hall]
I: You ever been to school, Mister Swanninger?
S: No sir, I never went but just a little in, in my life.
I: Yeah, I guess you can read and write then.
S: No.
I: You can't read and write?
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S: Yes sir, I got to, I got to go to that, the teacher had me to, she was raising me and Benny Darling, she was my cousin, she’d have us to, have us to stay together all the time.
I: Yes sir.
S: ... just little fellows, you know, and the teacher kept us up there with her.
I: She did?
S: She says "you children go on and wash your face and get you a drink, both go together now, now you mind me," I says “all right,” we went on, had a Gray daughter up there, she was my cousin, she and Raymond got to laughing about falling of the bench.
I: Did he?
S: Yeah we was so little we, and we was ld enough, we was small both of us, and they got to deviling us about sparking, you know, well he, Will says “now boys, that, that’s got to be cut out, deviling them children, they don’t know what sparking is, me and Grady, darnit, he was smart as he is, to tell me that he hid, to hear what we was talking about, you know, I was telling Benny, I says “I like my teacher pretty well, don’t you?” he says “yes,” said “I like her well” and I was just mighty amused, well he, Grady says, “I like her too,” I jumped, so he said “don’t let me scare you too bad,” and I says to him, I says, “Mister Dunn, well, what is it, what is sparking? Me and Benny wants to learn,” “why?” he says, “I don’t know,” he says “I’ll tell ye, children, both of ye,” says “they’ve got to quit deviling you for you'uns don’t know what sparking is,” what about that? Smith and Benny don’t know what it’s for [I: Yeah], what it means.
I: Yeah, did your cousin's family have much of a farm back there?
S: Yeah, on the side they had a good farm, yeah.
I: About how many acres was it?
S: Yeah, had about, let’s see, about three hundred and fifty acres.
I: What did you do when you were a little kid down, uh did you help out on the farm?
S: Yeah, I helped on the farm [I: Did you do the fishing ... ?], and uh we’d have to hoe corn and then we got to going to school, you know, went about a, a week and then we had to stop to pull fodder.
I: So you stopped about ... start ... about November ... the fodder?
S: Yeah, about November.
I: xx.
S: Yeah, and we’d take jobs on the farms, you know, and pull fodder.
I: So did you even do very much fishing and hunting over there in Cades Cove?
S: Yeah.
I: What did you ... ?
S: I was always fishing ans squirrel hunting.
I: Yeah, what kind of a gun did you use?
S: I was using a rifle then, had a, decided the last time we’d take a shotgun.
I: Go with you?
S: Sometimes, old Dan could follow me anyhow, or he’d go without us.
I: He would?
S: Yeah.
I: Did he?
S: And then Raymond would go too.
I: He went ...
S: Yeah.
I: He brought the knife?
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S: Well, he wouldn't take the ... they’ll make up their mush first, and make up the mush and uh let it stand about two days, and then you make up the mash, put it in and, and stir it till it begins to boil, uh begins to, begins to uh, mean you stir it.
I: xx.
S: Yeah?
I: To get it to work?
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S: Yeah, you, you put it in and, and break it up, and then you and, and then let it stand till, then it goes to work, it worked then and it just worked right on then and, and the bubbles run up and they bust and, and then it sinks, goes to sinking then, whenever it goes to sinking, just rise and sink, by then she, she’s ready then to make up, ready to go to boiling and then put it in the still then and, and then she goes to rise, be hard to tell that much without out xx actual-, hit’ll, hit'll tell it though, maybe.
I: What's the difference between mush and mash, is there any difference?
S: Yeah, a little bit of difference.
I: What is it?
S: It’s the, the mush is just made in mush, you know, and then you make up the mash, and uh that there kept, pour hot water on it and, and stir it up and make it up sort of, and put a little sugar in it.
I: That's the mash?
S: Yeah, and the, and rye meal and, and that, that’s, that’ll, that, that's all right then, you put it in and hit’ll go to boiling, you make it and, and then let it drip out in a little stream, but you'll have to watch it there when it starts going up, that’s what it's about to, about the, uh it's boiling over, never, it never does that when you put your hand on the arm thisaway, but then if, if it's hot, why you have to draw the fire, draw the fire out, you know, and then, it just runs to a, runs off to another stream, and then you, and then you put it to boiling, boy, she gets to roaring when she’s boiling.
[COUGHING]
S: That like a thump at all, you can hear it as far as from here down to Dave Sparks', just uh be thirty-five in a beat, and if they uh make a thump, well, I’d rather have, have singlings than doublings.
I: What are the singlings?
S: That's the, that's the first that runs off, you know, that’s how come me to get back from the hospital, mush, why I uh, I was drinking the first shots of singlings, you know, and it made me drunk, that’ll make you drunk when they’re b-, when they’re beading, yes sir.
I: What is a doubling?
S: Why, that’s when you double back, you know, to start up again.
I: ... for a doubling.
S: Yeah, yeah.
I: Did the law ever raid you when you were making whiskey?
S: Yeah.
I: They did? did they take any of you under arrest?
S: No, yeah, they r-, they arrested me, took me to Bryson jail.
I: They did?
S: Yeah.
I: How long did you have to stay there?
S: Stayed there about three week.
I: Do they make much liquor over in xx County?
S: Yeah, they make it all the time in thar.
I: ... around Scarsboro.
S: Yeah.
I: Did you make ...
S: N o ...
I: Yeah.
S: I’ve heared of it but I ain’t never been north.
I: Uh when did you come into Cades Cove?
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S: Well, dogged if I know, I’ve been in here, I come in, I forget now when it was, it, I come on the Tenet [?] River over here at Rabbit Creek and stayed there a year or two and then come back over here, I come over here then and, and I stayed at Dave Sparks' down here, well I stayed at on up here in the Russell Field a long time, two or three year, I lived there just by myself.
I: Uh any cattle up there in Russell Field?
S: Yeah, ain’t none there this year, though.
I: No, they don’t allow it now.
S: No. -----
I: Now uh tell us a little bit about, about finding gold now.
S: My ...
I: Can you do that?
S: Me and, me and Tom Graves was a-standing, and uh Hank Martin, and we went down i- i- in a hollow, you know, Tom says "there’s, there’s a gold mine in here somewheres, and let’s find it," I said, "all right, we went to, went up to here and I seen it, found the gold mine, Hank Martin says, "now boys, you found that gold mine," he said "don’t, don’t tell it to nobody," he was getting ready to open it up.
I: Yeah.
S: And then it wasn't too much more, Mister Asbury ... don’t tell me about it, he saw me, Mister Asbury said “let’s go up and see that boy, see what he says about it, and uh you have to look at it, don’t you?” yeah, and uh he uh he said “let’s go up and see him,” he says “and Tom come and set right down by it, I’ll see it, that mine you and Tom Graves found,” say, “how can you go to it?” and I said uh “it uh, hit’s right up on from here,” I says, “I never went to head of Pole Mountain this time of year unless I get down, and uh that’s on the other side of the river there,” and I says, “I’d uh well just go on up to the Pole Mountain till you come to a ivy thicket on the Pole Mountain, and then uh, and then put your hands on a rock, there’s a high rock stands there, put your hands on the high rock and say ‘good morning, rock, how’s everything blowing here?’ and walk around the rock, you have to put your hands on it,” Uncle Tommy said they had to do that, but then, then said every time, they’d be caught off every time if they didn’t put their hand on the rock, “well,” he says “now Asbury,” he said, “I don’t tell the rock ‘good morning, how’s everything a-going here?’” and he uh, we went then and Uncle Tommy says “the offer is three hundred dollars if you don’t show it, it’s on my land,” I said “all right, Uncle Tommy," I says, "I won’t let nobody know where it’s at,” I said, Tom Graves would tell it just around everywhere, I took Jones over there to hu- hunt for it, and it uh Fred, and they couldn’t find it, they hain’t found it yet, turns out Turkey George tell me to come out and, and uh he wanted me just to show it to him and nobody else, he said, said “now come, don’t you do it, don’t you just show it to him, we tried to undermine him and then they, they’d a-beat it out of that mine, don’t show it,” said, “mine’s good, it’s already been tested, you know, proved out to be good,” and then he, he uh, I told him I wouldn’t tell it and, and I’ve never have told it yet over there, Tom’s old daddy’d tell him to tell me to come out, and he wanted me to show it to him, maybe he could find it next time, I’d tell him, I says “you’re not going to show it to him” “no, I ain’t going to, I wouldn’t show it to him,” I says, “I just don’t know whether I’ll have any work or not.” xx Mister Asbury sent me word when he come not to show it to Tom, everyone that, all that I talked to yet said not to show it to him, Tom said he wished I’d come out, so I may show it to him and well yesh, take him and show it to, show it to him, and I ain’t going to tell it, would you?
I: No, xx.
S: Yeah, it’s uh silver, I uh, gold and silver, well, it, hit’s, hit’s silver, more silver than anything else.
I: xx
S: I don’t know where the mine is, no, I’m, dogged if I know, they, they said uh to go to where rock, to go to where they can, they can see the rock in three places.
to go to where they can, they can see the rock in three places.
I: xx.
S: Yeah, right above the mine.