BY ROGER SMITH
MOUNTAIN CITIZEN

INEZ — Friends gathered Saturday for Heritage Day on God’s Promise and Kingfisher trails for an experience in history and culture.

From the front porch of a log cabin built in 1937 and relocated from Davis Branch in Inez, Donna and Eddie Fitch were “Ma and Pa” in a skit that took the audience back to when people visited each other’s kitchens and front porches unannounced and were welcomed. The story was of self-reliant mountain families who depended on nature and hard work to get what they needed.

“Life on the mountain is kindly tough,” Pa said. “Especially this time of year. You gotta prepare for wintertime.”

The day started before dawn for Ma and Pa. The cabin was cold that morning, so Ma started the fire as she usually did as Pa headed out to begin his chores.

“Pa” was a busy man working daily to ensure his family had food and a warm shelter. In the mornings, he fed his animals, gathered the eggs and milked the cows. To keep his family warm, he cut firewood and picked coal from the coal bank on the hillside.

Before waking the children, Ma had a giant pan of biscuits rising in the oven.

“I feed them, get them ready and send them off to school,” Ma said. “Because schoolhouse learning is very important. All children need to learn to read and write and do arithmetic to make it in the world.”

With the children off to school, Ma tidied up the house, washed her laundry, hung it on a line outside to dry and performed other chores.

The day before, Ma and Pa had made soap, but it being fall of the year, Pa had plowing to do Saturday to get the ground ready for next year’s garden.

“We had a good crop this year,” said Pa. “We raised taters, corn, matoes, cushaws.”

The family worked hard in the garden all summer; they harvested and preserved their food in the fall. They canned a lot of it – a chore that took all day and entailed Ma putting the Mason canning jars in her washtub over an outside fire.

Green beans and apples were two items that the children could help string for drying. Other vegetables, such as potatoes and cushaw, went to the root cellar for storage.

The mountain provided plenty of wild berries that the family gathered and Ma used to make jellies and jams. Ma said some of those blackberries were as “big as your thumb.” They also foraged wild “greens” and liked eating those with hot bacon grease and cornbread. 

The family had no refrigerator, so when Pa killed a hog, he cured the meat with salt and hung it in the root cellar.

“It will keep three or four months,” he said.

About once a month, Pa went to town to fetch flour, meal, sugar, coffee and a few other things. When the sacks were empty, Ma used them for sewing clothing and quilts.

“The mountain is pretty self-sufficient,” explained Pa. “Our food, clothing and heat all come from this mountain.”

Ma reminded him, “We would have none of this without faith in God.”

Ma invited their friends to stay for dinner. She had plenty of soup beans in a kettle over an open fire, fried taters and cornbread.

The neighbors, including a group from Trevecca College in Nashville, sang gospel hymns, starting with “Amazing Grace,” before supper and had some excellent conversations. Later, they did a little pickin’ and singin’ on the porch.

Teaching at Trace Fork School

As folks gathered on the hill, teacher Pat Marcum spoke from the porch of the historic Trace Fork School – a one-room schoolhouse relocated Kingfisher. Marcum talked about how educators taught students in the days of one-room schools.

“Men had rules; women had rules,” Marcum said. “They had to be very moral. They had to be in before dark … couldn’t interact with each other. It was very strict for teachers at that time.”

Many teachers lived with their students’ families.

School would start around 8 a.m. and end at 2-3 p.m., depending on the season. Before the bell each day, older students helped the teacher prepare by carrying wood for the fire and water for handwashing.

“Students would walk, sometimes 2-3 miles, if they didn’t have a horse or pony to ride,” said Marcum. “So it was really hard to get an education. You had to really be determined.”

Once the teacher rang the bell, girls got in one line and boys in another. Girls first entered the schoolhouse in single file, hung their coats, put the lunch pails on their desks, and then stood beside them. The boys did the same.

“The teacher would go to the front of the classroom and welcome the students,” said Marcum. “The first thing they did after the roll was called was say the ‘Pledge of Allegiance.’ Then they would have a prayer.”

The teacher taught the older students first.

“Then they would help with the younger ones,” noted Marcum.

Without textbooks, students read from the Bible.

“After reading, they would go into penmanship. They would write scriptures from the Bible.”

Following a recess, the class worked on arithmetic. The students had another break and then went to work on geography and history.

“It was a busy day for a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse,” added Marcum. “It was from first to eighth grades, and they had to teach each grade level.”