Jim Sutton, Cataloochee, Haywood County, North Carolina
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Jim Sutton, 60 years old, was from Cataloochee, in Haywood County, North Carolina. He had three to four years of formal education and was a CCC employee.
[transcripption copyrigh Michael Montgomery and Paul Reed, 2017]
One time way back when we, I was just a boy, me and my brother, we decided we’d make some liquor way back in Smoky Mountain in a place called Hell’s Half Acre, we went over and put us up a still and we was a-making some awful good, it was so good you could taste the gal’s feet in it that hoed the corn it was made out of, one day George got drunk, that was my brother, he was chunking the fire that day, blowed the cap off of it, I guess it went seventy-five or ninety feet in the air, an old friend of ours was away back on the Old Field Balsam, it was known at that time as Mount Sterling, now it’s Mount Sterling Lookout Tower, and he seen it, and he come to brother George in about a week after that and asked him how he’s getting along making, George told him he hadn’t, wasn’t a-making any, he said, “well, there ain’t no use to lie about it,” says “I know right where your still’s a-setting,” “well,” George says, “if you can tell me where it’s at, why I’ll tell you how it’s getting along,” and he said, ”well, it’s right in the head of the Sal Hannah Branch, to the back of Ground Hog,” he’d told him twenty feet of where it was a-setting.
Yeah, my daddy one time, he was an awful horse trader, he had an old wind-sucker, one morning he got on him, he said, “I’ll trade that thing if I don’t get nothing but a bull yearling for him,” that was about the cheapest thing on the market in this country at that time, so he lit out and he was gone about three days and nights, come back in, he had a big horse, and he said, “well,” he says, “I sure did fix up that old fellow that I traded with, said, “I let the latch down in his barn,” so he took him and turned him in the stable and he had a big sore on his back about as big as a big saucer, and just as soon as he turned him in the stable he nailed a, went to cough, sucking wind, he’d swapped a wind-sucker for a wind-sucker, well George was a right smart boy, he decided he’d slip down and feed him one morning, went down and had a big wild housecat stayed in the barn, he raised a plank in the barn floor and he thowed that cat on that old poor horse’s back, and he, then the row started, you’ve never heared no such commotion in all the days of your life down there, my daddy, he hollered for mother, said “come here,” he says, said, “confound it,” said, “that cussed old cat scratched my horse,” he said, “he’s teetotally ruined him.”
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Boy, these shoestring pieces, I won't be bothered with no such talk around me, I guess that's about all for this one.