1 50 1 https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/11d2a7d693590e36fc8e3964164d2bda.mp3 d5fc2a65acdc244f09c9aa240c17ab22 https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/5529024b8af3927f0db09abbf5db45ec.pdf 1ff1ba879a7ad11aa89876d06d82abc2 PDF Text Text Oral History Transcript Appalachian State University • Collection 111, Tape 26/27 Interviewee: Bill Brinkley Interviewer: Lester Harmon 1973 February 8 Introduction Snow is falling outside and we have just settled down in the Brinkley home after a delicious dinner. Bill’s home with his wife Rosemary reflects his love for people and nature. Family portraits flank the walls. Bill, over six feet tall, is a very stalwart man. His hands tell the story of a life of hard work, and his eyes speak to you in an honest, cheerful way. He is very attentive to my questioning and is very interested in our oral history project. A very congenial and intelligent man, Bill has lived in Elk Park all of his life and runs a hardware store there. He has much to offer about the Elk Park and Avery County area and is very genuine and entertaining in is delivery. This is an interview with Bill Brinkley in Elk Park, North Carolina on February 8, 1973 for the Appalachian Oral History Project by Lester Harmon. LH: Lester Harmon BB: Bill Brinkley Pam: Pam ?? Mrs. Brinkley: Mrs. Brinkley LH: Would you give us the name and the birthplace of your parents and the number and names of your brothers and sister and their ages? BB: My father was D.G. Brinkley, and he was born in Grassy Creek, which is near Spruce Pine. He was born about 1885. My mother was a Carroll. She was born in Chester, South Carolina about 1888 or 1889. My oldest brother lives in California named Edwin who is about 70 years of age. My father was 91 when he died and he’s been dead about two years. My mother is still living; she’s 88 and living in Florida with my sister. There were six children; the eldest was Edwin. My oldest sister is about 65 and she lives in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. My next brother is about 63 and lives in Los Angeles, California. The next child in line is another sister who is 60 years old; she lives in Los Angeles. Then my brother and myself are twins. We’re 56, born in 1917 in two different months – June and July. LH: Is there a story behind that? BB: We were actually born in June, but at that time of course the roads were very bad, and 1 �there was not much transportation. The doctor that brought us in, when he listed our birth in the courthouse in Newland, why, he must have gone over in August. He said, “Well, they were born the 27th of the last month.” So I have two birthdays. That’s the reason I get so many presents! LH: When did you come to Elk Park? BB: I was born here. LH: Can you talk a little bit about what life was like as a child? Did you live on a farm and grow your own food? Do you remember any scarce periods? LH: Well, as a child no. That was before the Depression. My father was a merchant, and we did raise right much food that we ate, but that was customary with everybody in this section, of course. I had a very good childhood. I had my twin brother, always had someone to play with, of course. So, as I remember, I had a very happy childhood. We didn’t realize any Depression until about 1929-30. It was about 1929 when the Depression started. It wasn’t too bad in this mountain area because people, most everyone had land, and they did raise most of their food. Maybe not a big variety, but a sufficient amount of food. Our worst period was between 1929-33. At that time, there was scarcely any money, and of course, we had very little clothing, except about one change, and that was it. But by 1935, we had about come out of the Depression, this whole area really. Although the WPA lasted until about almost up until World War Two started. The lady next door to us, she was a great hand at canning, especially peaches. She had several hundred cans of peaches, and she canned them all in usually ½ gallon jars, fruit jars, or quart fruit jars. She dated them all, and she had some that were 14-15 years old. She didn’t have any children, so it was just her and her husband and she canned peaches every year, no matter what. I’m sure when they both died; they still had some peaches in that basement. Pam: Would you tell him about the Sunday suit you had? BB: Well, the first suits we got were about 1933 or 1934; we each got a suit of clothes. My brother and I put it on to go to Sunday school. We got up the road a ways, at the time we lived across the street from here, and we looked at each other. One, I don’t remember which, but one called the other one and said, “Well, you look like a Philadelphia layer.” We just turned around and came back in, and took the suit off. We put on our overalls and went to Sunday school. That same suit after I had it just a short while. I was playing on Sunday, and it got warm, so I took it off and laid it across this fence and forgot it. Of course, we didn’t remember it, because we didn’t wear the suit except on Sundays, and it was on a Sunday when I took the thing off and hung it on the fence. 2 �The following Sunday, I couldn’t find the suit. I couldn’t remember where in the world that coat was, and it was during a rainy period. Oh, two or three weeks later, I happened to look up where we played that Sunday, just glanced up that way, and I saw the coat hanging on the fence. And of course it was ruined, so I didn’t have another suit until about 1937, somewhere along there. But, as I say, by that time, the Depression was over with as far as we were concerned, and most people in this section. I really don’t think the mountain people felt the Depression nearly as hard as the people in this section. We have been classified as a poverty area along with the Kentucky group and so on, but in my opinion, Avery County is really not a poverty stricken country, never has been. LH: You were saying that you were living here at the start of the Depression, and were all the kids in the family here, or did any of them leave home during the Depression, or did they leave home because of the Depression? BB: No, my two eldest brothers left during the Depression, but not because of it. They went west to seek their fortunes, and they’re still out there, living in California. But it wasn’t the Depression that made them leave. The oldest one I think left before the Depression even started. LH: Your father and your mother, did the Depression have a big effect on their jobs, or did they change the jobs during the Depression, or were you working during the Depression at all anywhere? BB: Well, my father had a store and of course my mother never worked. I graduated from high school in 1934 at the age of 16, and I went to work in that store soon as we were out of high school. Of course the Depression was practically over then, well it wasn’t over, but times were certainly better by 1934. But we didn’t have enough money to go to college, and we did have to go to work. LH: You’re talking now a little bit about school. Can you tell me if your parents went to high school or if they went to college? Tell me about your brothers, sisters, and about your school life and some of the teachers or schoolmates that you had and how the schools have changed around here in Avery County and Elk Park since you were there? BB: My father went to college two years at N.C. State. My brother went to Davidson, my oldest brother. He was going to be a minister but he changed his mind on that. None of the other children ever went to college. LH: Do you remember anything about how the schools were when you were in grammar school and some of the good times that you had and what the schools were like then? BB: Well, I remember of course, the first day that I ever went to school and remember my first teacher. Her name was Miss Bean. Back then it wasn’t the first grade, your first grade was called the “Primer,” and that was because of a book that you had was named The Primer. That’s 3 �why you never went to the first grade, you went to the Primer. Then you went to the second grade. The schools were very good, but by the time we were in fourth grade, they combined two grades, the fourth and the fifth. We had the same teacher for the fourth grade and the fifth in the same classroom. She’d teach the fourth half a day and the fifth grade half a day, and the other half of course was supposed to study. Then, that grammar school was here in Elk Park, and in the sixth grade we were transferred to the high school building. It started, you weren’t in high school, but the sixth grade was taught in the high school, and the seventh grade, and then your freshman year in high school started in the eighth grade, and of course we only had four years of high school, so you were out at the eleventh grade. LH: You graduated from Cranberry School? BB: Yes, Cranberry High School. LH: The building looks a lot like the one that my dad went to school in. I think he’s 59 now, but he graduated from a school that looked a whole lot like the Cranberry School out here. BB: Well, we had very good teachers in high school, I thought, and I still think so – looking back. We had an excellent English teacher. If I learned all that she tried to teach us, I would know a lot more English I’m sure. But her primary interest thought as in literature rather than English grammar. But she was an excellent teacher, and I had her for four straight years. But she was very hard, and a lot of students tried to get another teacher if they possibly could. So her classes were never too large; really we learned more in her class, I thought, than the other ones that went to the English teacher. LH: You say that when you got out of high school, you and Bob went to work at the store. After the store, what did you do? Or have you stayed with the store up to now? BB: I’ve never done anything else other than extra things that I’ve gotten into, but primarily I have never left the store. LH: How has the store changed since back then? A whole lot? BB: Of course we started in an old building, but we built a new store that we’re in now. We built in 1940, just before World War Two started, and since that time, I built on it in 1957, built an addition on the east end and built the post office on the west end. But the building is really comparatively new although it was, part of it was built in 1940, but it’s a solid brick building. The old store was a wooden structure, very commonplace with what you would think of as an old country store. 4 �LH: Wasn’t it a good grocery store then? BB: We had general merchandise. We had groceries, dry goods, shoes, a little hardware, practically anything you would want. LH: It’s mainly hardware now, isn’t it? BB: Yes. LH: What kind of churches were in the Elk Park area or in the Avery County area then? What was the main denomination of most of the people around here? What were the churches like and how much have they changed since then? BB: They haven’t changed a great lot. I’m Methodist, my father was Methodist, and my mother was Baptist, but we all went to the Methodist Church, and it’s the same church we’re going to today. Of course the first church burned; then it was rebuilt and remodeled. The Baptist Church, of course they have done quite a bit of remodeling on it, but it’s in the same place and primarily the same church as when I was a boy. And the Christian Church here was an old wooden structure when I was a boy; it was torn down and has been a new church built since that time, but the church – the Christian Church is approximately 65 years old. The first structure is primarily the same because it was a brick building, and it burned, and it just burned the inside out and the roof off of it. It was built back just like it was except a little more modern. LH: Did a lot of people pitch in and help build the church, a lot of community people? BB: Yes, it was built and rebuilt entirely by people, by members of the Methodist Church and some of the friends of Methodists from Memphis. There was no outside help at all except from the Memphis Conference did, I think – maybe gave us 1,000 dollars, something like that. The church burned about 1952 and cost about 20,000 dollars to rebuild. LH: Is that Elk Park Methodist Church (pointing)? BB: Yes. LH: How did Elk Park get its name? Do you know? BB: Well, I’ve asked that question to many an old timer and I don’t believe any of them really ever knew. But the only tale that I have ever heard was that they claimed that the elk, which was the deer of course, because we had no elk, never had, but the deer well, this was one of their stopping places. You know deer migrate and they usually run within a certain area, and they were supposed to have had a place here that they stayed for a time, and that’s why they named it Elk River. 5 �I really don’t know whether the deer had anything to do with the naming of all this Elk and Banner Elk. I do know that Banner Elk was named particularly from, mainly from the fact that it was – everyone that lived there practically were Banners; they settled the town. But Elk Park at the turn of the century was the hub of this whole section. The railroad came here. Elk Park was about three times as large as it is now. They had the railroad, which was narrow gauge of course, coming to the Cranberry mines, which was mining iron ore. The town had a depot, had three hotels, it had a bank, had a sawmill. It had three livery stables. A livery stable is where people went to rent a horse and a buggy or a horse. There were three large ones so everybody came into this area stayed in Elk Park, and the community grew out of here to the various other places in the area. Salesmen and so on came from Johnson City from wholesale places that came up here selling goods. They all rode that train to Elk Park. LH: What train was that? BB: Tweetsie. LH: Tweetsie, that’s in Boone now right? BB: That’s right. Narrow gauge and it ran to Boone, but we had a flood in 1940, either 1940 or ’41 and the flood washed the railroad out, practically all of it out from Cranberry to Boone. And it was beginning to be a losing proposition, so they were allowed to not build it back. Got certain laws and regulations about busses and trains; you can’t just stop them whether you lose money or not. You’ve got to carry on. So they came on the Cranberry for a number of years until 1950. I believe the last run that Tweetsie made was about 1952, and they were allowed to cut the railroad out. Of course it was really more expensive to get anything in on the railroad by that time than it was by truck, because it being a narrow gauge, everything had to be transferred. It came by rail, and it was transferred to Johnson City to this narrow gauge train. We sold sheet rock and bought it by the carload out of New York and it costs us less freight to get it from New York to Elizabethton or Johnson City than it did by rail from Johnson City on up here, which is only 30 miles away. Of course the mines were operating too at that time. LH: Mines around here? BB: The Cranberry iron ore mines that was only two miles from here. One of the biggest belts of ore in this selection known anywhere, magnetized ore that is. It is magnetized, but it’s a low grade, and that’s why they are operating. The cost is no greater to get out; in fact, it’s less because granite is so strong. 6 �They didn’t have timber in any of the mines; they just left a pillar of granite every so often. They didn’t have to timber the mine with wood, so it wasn’t any more expensive to get out but the grade was so low, the ore grades were so low that it got to where it wasn’t profitable to operate. Some of the mines closed sown about 1930, somewhere long then. LH: How did Elk Park start? I mean, who first settled here and was it because of mining that the town got started? BB: No I think…deer hunting, elk hunting. I don’t know where he went (telling a story of a local old timer), maybe to Montana or somewhere northwest, and he was telling this group of people when he got back about what all he had seen, how it was way out west, what a big country it was and said, “The forest was so thick,” he said, “You can’t even walk through them, the trees were so close together.” And he said, “Elk,” he said, “You’ve never seen such elk. They had horns this large” (used his hands as wide as he could spread them). Finally somebody stopped him in the middle of the story, and they laughed and said, “If the elk had horns that big, how did they get through those trees that were so close together?” This gentleman didn’t even slow down on his story, he just looked at the man and said, “That’s their story.” This was typical of the type of stories that he told, and I guess if somebody kept a record of all of them, it would really had been a best seller. He certainly was surely full of them. Oh, he told another story about hunting. He was a great hunter and said he saw twelve turkeys sitting on a limb and he said, “I checked my gun and only had one cartridge. I jerked up my gun and got all twelve of those turkeys.” Somebody said, “Well, how in the world (laughing) did you get all those turkeys with just one shell?” He said, “Well, I’ll tell you. I shot and split the limb and when the limb went together caught all the turkeys’ toes and held them there until I got up and killed them.” But he was full of stories. We have had lots of characters like that. LH: How about some of the community leaders or decision makers, like the rulers of the town and everything over the years? BB: Well, I have been mayor of Elk Park myself and an Alderman two or three times. I had the distinction of running for mayor against the only woman that ever ran for mayor. Of course she campaigned like everything and I didn’t campaign, but I still won. She is to my knowledge, the only woman who ever ran for mayor of the town of Elk Park. LH: How long ago was that? BB: That was in 1939 or ’40, about then. We’ve had some good men, had a Harmon by the way, good community leader. He taught Sunday school and taught the men’s class for about 15 or 18 years in the Methodist church. I was superintendent at the time, the superintendent for 17 years, of the Sunday school up until the time I went into the army in fact. But Mr. Harmon, he became a U.S. Marshall under the Eisenhower administration, and he had some sort of illness 7 �and died. He wasn’t too old of a man when he died, but he had left Elk Park of course when he became a U.S. Marshall and moved to Asheville. LH: You have said that Elk Park used to be bigger than it is now. Has the population decreased that much, or just the general size? BB: Well, Avery County has grown less in population until the last three or four years. Now, what happened there was, of course, a lack of jobs, and a lot of people who moved away to get these jobs during the war, stayed so the population went down from 14,000 to 10,000 at one time, and it was because of lack of jobs. There was no industry to amount to anything for a number of years, the mines had closed. After the war, they started coming back a little bit, but not too much, but then “tourism” has done more to increase the population – to get the population back to closer to the point where it was, than anything else. People who are retired want to come to the mountains to lived because they know this I the finest place on earth. A lot of people like to come here and there’s been a good deal of the land that’s been sold to outsiders who want to come here, and will be here for the rest of their lives. LH: Has the tourist industry had, in your opinion, a bad effect on the natural beauty of the mountains around? I know like Beech Mountain and some of the bigger places used to be, well nothing there and a lot of people feel like it has done more harm than good. I was wondering how you feel about that? BB: Well, of course there are several thoughts on that. The county as a whole felt like tourism was the only way out of growing. Naturally they wanted to grow and they hated to see the population decreased. So they tried to make it as attractive as possible for the tourists. But it was slow coming for the simple reason there were no accommodations and so people didn’t come because of that. And then on the other hand, people are afraid to build accommodations because the tourists aren’t coming. But it made a vicious cycle out of it. These resort areas such as Beech Mountain and Sugar, ski places, some people resent them because for one thing, it has made land go sky-high, and it’s gotten where it’s hard to even buy a piece of land in Avery County unless you pay what I would say, an exorbitant price for it. Really, in that respect it’s (tourist industry) hurt. Of course, there’s not, well, there a few fairly big landholders in the county, but the land isn’t for sale. Meade Corporation owns about 4,500 acres and they sell it sometimes. They are the biggest owners. LH: Who is that? BB: Meade Corporation – they are a paper company of course, and they recently sold 40,000 acres in Jackson County. That’s been a big, well, quite a bit in the paper about that because they didn’t sell it to the Forest Service, but they offered it to the Forest Service and they said they would like to have it but they didn’t have the money. Then Meade was ready to sell and 8 �these developers from Florida bought it and gave them five million (dollars) for it. And now, of course everybody over there’s hollering that they really didn’t give the government a chance to buy it – that’s neither here nor there, I don’t know how much truth there is to it, but I do know from personal experience that the government is tied up in too much red tape when it comes to something that they would like to have, that they don’t do anything about it until it’s too late. I had 500 acres in the middle of crops that they owned all around and they wanted to buy it. They never did buy it, and finally I sold it to another party. So, I expect that’s about what happened to Meade. BB: At the beginning of the Depression, for this area, when the government decided – I don’t know; they had been giving help elsewhere, but the way it was started here, the help situation from the government, they have you a little piece of paper that said that you were entitled to so much food money and you took that to the store. We took it just like it was a five dollar bill. For instance, this allowed you to buy that much food, or whatever it said. And of course the amount was given accordingly to the number in the family. Now this was a monthly thing. LH: Rations? BB: No, it was – I forget what they called it, but anyway – it was the largest amount that I can remember anybody getting was one man that had 13 children, he got $21 per month. He spent half of that for tobacco and snuff, his wife dipped snuff and he chewed tobacco. And he spent the rest of it for essentials that they could not raise. And they existed on it; nobody actually thought they were poor, poverty stricken, or anything else. So it just shows you that really – well, there was no great need for money. That man raised practically everything that they are, with few exceptions, but that $21 helped out with him using half of it for snuff and tobacco! LH: How many were in the family again? BB: Thirteen! He had 11 children plus himself and his wife. Then at a later date, I knew a man that had 19 children and he and his wife, and he was never on welfare and never had a job. He pulled moss, dug herbs, and that sort of stuff for a living and yet he raised 19 children. LH: You said welfare – are you talking about the… BB: I’m talking about a later date, such as when the welfare program started after the war. What we called the welfare program that started after World War Two. And this man was never on welfare, and yet he never had a job working for anybody unless he just wanted to. He made his living out of…well, off the land. Mrs. Brinkley: Did they pick Galax? BB: Yes, Galax and moss and dug ginseng and crabapple roots and so on. Ginseng is a root 9 �that’s very valuable, even to this day. The Chinese use it extensively for medical reasons of some reason or other, but that’s where it was all sent from, but it’s always brought anywhere from $15 to $40 per pound, and of course it’s very scare. But I had known people that found patches of it where they’ve gotten out 800-900 pounds and made themselves quite a bit of money. But that hasn’t happened but very few times. LH: Do you remember the change in the schools or the churches or the country stores around? Do you remember any great changes in those during the Depression? Working in the store (Brinkley Hardware Store), you probably saw some changes in the store there? BB: Well, I don’t quite know what you mean by change. We saw, naturally business get better as people got more money, and as the Depression ended. Of course, the war naturally created – between the WPA and the war – they created many more jobs and there was money around. So, the volume of business gained constantly. Pam: What about the packaging in the store? How has that changed? BB: Well now, that’s changed completely in my day. When I first started working in the store nothing was packaged. Sugar came in 100 pound bags and we poured it in a barrel. People never bought more than five pounds, something like that. Most people bought a quarter’s worth, which was about five cents per pound. You had to weigh it out on a scale and tie it up in a bag. Lard or shortening came in a 100 pound drum. You opened the top of it and there was a little paddle that you took, you put the lard in a tray and sold whatever the amount they wanted from a nickel to 50 cents worth. Flour was not sold in anything less than 25 pound bags. Meal was not sold in anything less than 25 pound bags. Self-rising was unheard of. Peanut butter came in a 25 pound can; you sold it similar to lard, in a little wax tray. Bologna didn’t have to be refrigerated; you had no refrigeration to start with. Rather it came in a white cloth sack and it would keep, we hung it from the ceiling. Bananas we bought by the stalk. Sold two, three, or four – they wouldn’t ask you for pounds. They would say give me five bananas or a half dozen bananas, or whatever. Pam: Do you want to tell him about the time when you stuffed your banana – was it a banana? BB: It was a banana yes, that’s a – I don’t know whether it’ll help his story or not. I was – that was before I was out of school of course, and my daddy had the store and we would go in there in the afternoons and try to steal us a little piece of candy or something. We didn’t have to steal it, he was very liberal – he would let us have it, but you would ask and he’d say how much you could have. So we got in this stalk of bananas, which was very unusually in that day and time. The stalk was as green as a gourd. But we wanted one so badly, he finally let us have one and I decided that I’d get me another one, and I didn’t ask for it. About that time I got it about half eaten, my daddy came around the counter. I just stuck all of it in my mouth and swallowed it, 10 �and that night I nearly died of a stomach ache. But, we finally had oranges and that sort of stuff at Christmastime – in the store. There was really nothing packaged. LH: Did you have the pickle barrel and the cracker barrel? BB: Had a pickle barrel, pigs feet – pickled pigs feet. Sold fish from a big barrel, salted fish that you could keep from now on. People had to take them home and soak them all night, and they usually ate them for breakfast. By the way, the main reason for that is they had to soak that salt out of them before they could eat them. They would soak the fish during the night and it was just a breakfast food to the mountain people at that time. Nuts, we never sold any nuts except at Christmastime. Oranges, tangerines, and all that – just Christmastime. Saw very few toys and we had a tin can for a car – played around with the bank and make a road out of it with a tin can, an empty tin can. Pam: What about buckeyes? BB: Buckeyes were very similar I appearance to a chestnut, except much larger. And a lot of people had the superstition that to carry a buckeye was lucky. This one boy was very superstitious. He carried a buckeye for about 20 years that I know of. But, he got in trouble one time, and he was telling the story later, he said, “I promised the great Lord and this buckeye that if I get out of this, I’ll never do it again!” You were talking about calamities…I guess the biggest calamity that ever hit this section of the country was the blight of the chestnut trees. I don’t know really what extent it was here, but I think the chestnut tree was about the majority of the types of trees all through the Appalachian area, probably and maybe all the way to the West Coast, I don’t know. LH: A lot of barns were built from wormy chestnut weren’t they? BB: That’s right. And now its worth anywhere from 1,000 dollars to 1,200 per thousand board feet. I bought it for $15 a 1,000 board feet, sawed and planed - $15. But the chestnut tree was one of the biggest losses we ever had in many ways. The loss of the timber, the loss of the chestnuts to the animals of course, the squirrel, deer. Practically all of the animals ate chestnuts and by losing the chestnuts, why, it badly affected the wildlife of this area. But, you really didn’t realize how many chestnut trees there were until they all died. I can remember going from here to Blowing Rock on what we call the Yonahlossee Trail, which is still there any is part of the (Blue Ridge) Parkway now. You can see a great distance along that road, up the mountain and below the mountain, and before the leaves would come out, or just when they would begin to come out, you could see all these dead chestnut trees. I’d say ¾ of the trees were chestnut trees. But they would stand out at that period you see, and you could tell that they were dead chestnuts. It was a great loss to the whole country. 11 �LH: What was it that caused the… BB: The blight? LH: Yes, the blight. BB: Somebody brought in a chestnut tree either from China or Japan, and it was diseased, and it gave the blight to the chestnuts in North America, and that blight spread. They never found anyway to stop it, and it killed every chestnut tree in the United States. LH: They can’t grow them anymore, can they? BB: Well, they have found one that’s blight-proof, but it’s really, its what they call an English Chestnut. It’s much larger than our chestnuts. You’ve got to plant it and take care of it, like you’re taking care of an apple tree or something. Pam: Well, what kind is it that the Penland’s have? They have one in their yard; we eat chestnuts from it all the time. I think it’s a Japanese kind or something? BB: Well, it probably one of those English Chestnut trees – they call them “Horse Chestnuts” because they’re larger. They are really not a true chestnut as far as the chestnut we had. I’ve never heard of anybody cutting the timber from them, because we don’t have that many of them. The chestnut timber now, if you can find any that were sound, some were found even years afterward, and they were able to cut a lot of the logs found on the ground or still standing and cut the sound wood out of them. It brought big money because it was scarce wood, and everybody like those worm holes. LH: My sister and her husband got a wormy chestnut bookcase for a wedding present and they said that was the best present they got. It’s really beautiful. BB: But, the funny thing about the chestnut tree. If it was cut but not soon enough, it got shaky and a shaky chestnut lumber was worthless and still is even today. If you had it, it would be worthless. In fact, a man offered me 40,000 board feet about five or six years ago. I had a wood working shop and we had a lot of demand for things made of chestnut lumber that was cut, so he offered the 40,000 feet for $35 a thousand feet. I didn’t know that much about it. So, I went to somebody that did and asked, “Out of 40,000 feet, surely to goodness you could cut enough good out of it to get five or six thousand feet,” and he said, “No, if it’s shaky chestnut, you cannot get anything good out of it. If you had ten million feet of it, you couldn’t.” So I didn’t buy it. About all you can use it for is for sheathing for a barn or something like that, but it won’t last anytime you see. Once it’s exposed to the weather, it doesn’t last. 12 �LH: Comparing childhood during the Depression days, when you were growing up – what did you like best about those days? What were some of your best days? What do you like best about living now and what did you not like back then? BB: It would take a long time to answer all than, but quickly: The Depression didn’t bother us because I was too young, and we were in a business where I guess, we made money faster than the common run of people. So I had a car when I was 17 and have had one ever since. The first car I ever bought was the only one I was ever able to pay cash for, I think. I guess that I was better off between 1935-45, than I ever have been since! LH: I guess that’s something you don’t like about now, the way everything cost a lot more. BB: Well, it’s really harder to accumulate anything or make any money this day and time than it was in those days because of high taxes and the high cost of living. Bought insurance back when it was cheap and had the money for it. If you had the money today it would be worth well, what is it worth now? A dollar is worth about 40 cents. I doubt that it’s even worth that. The government’s index claims that stuff has risen so much, that I can remember the first car that I bought in 1935, brand new Deluxe Ford cost 600 dollars. And of course, everything is not that much difference of course, but that is an example – that’s why I said with a little money back in those days, you could really have yourself a ball, because it didn’t cost anything. Go on vacation, I’ve gone to Florida and spent less than $200, now it will cost you that and a little more than that to buy a plane ticket there and back. LH: Or just to stay down there a while in a motel. Forty dollars a day in a motel for practically all of them. What do you like best, if you can pinpoint anything, about today’s lifestyle, the way things are now? BB: Well, I like the improvements man has made, certainly. A lot of people say the “Good old days.” When I say that, I’m talking about the fact that stuff didn’t cost much. But I still appreciate the fact that we have all these “luxuries” like dishwashers that do a lot for the housewife. But the trash-smasher, the dishwasher, the refrigerator, -- that’s one thing we’ve always had, so that doesn’t mean as much to me, but I do – from the fact that until after the war, there was more than 10% of the people outside of the town that had lights. Everywhere now rural districts have lights, and that is to be a very, certainly a luxury for them. Bound to be, and that was the first thing that everybody did after the war that could get them of course, these other things could come in such as washing machines, refrigerators, whatever. But I do like the fact that man has made all the progress he has. I’ve certainly seen more progress made in my lifetime than was made for previous, well, some people say millions of years. Some people say 10,000 years, or whatever. But that’s up to the individual to think what he wants to about it, but I think more progress has been made in the past 25 years than ever 13 �has been made before. And maybe in the next 25 years it will be – it’s hard to imagine, but maybe just as much or more. LH: If you could change something right now, what would you change? BB: Well, that’s hard to keep from thinking of personal matters, and that wouldn’t have anything to do with what you’re asking. 14 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews Description An account of the resource In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region. The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students. Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU. An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school. This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1965-1989 Sound A resource whose content is primarily intended to be rendered as audio. Artist Brinkley, Bill (interviewee) Harmon, Lester (interviewer) Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:01, Buckeye luck charm Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Bill C. Brinkley, February 3, 1973 Description An account of the resource Bill Carroll Brinkley was born on July 27, 1917 in Elk Park in Avery County to David Brinkley (b. July 24, 1879 – January 1971) who was from Grassy Creek near Spruce Pine, North Carolina and Carroll Ivey Brinkley who was from Chester, South Carolina, and he had five siblings including a twin brother. He graduated from Cranberry High School in 1934 then started working in the family hardware store and served briefly in the U.S. Army enlisting in February 1945. He died on March 20, 2001 at the age of 83. During the interview he reflects on a happy childhood during the Depression partly because everyone was self­‐sufficient and raised their own food. He provides several anecdotal stories about his education, the family owned Brinkley Hardware Store in Elk Park, religion and local churches, the origin Elk Park, the railroad, the Cranberry mine, and tourism in Avery County. He also discusses collecting herbs and rationing during the Depression and relates stories about panthers and the Brown Mountain Lights. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brinkley, Bill Carroll Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 3-Feb-73 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989, W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Any commercial use of the materials, without the written permission of the Appalachian State University, is strictly prohibited. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 14 pages Language A language of the resource English English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant <kml xmlns="http://earth.google.com/kml/2.0"><Folder><name>OpenLayers export</name><description>Exported on Thu Oct 24 2013 14:11:05 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time)</description></Folder></kml>||||osm Elk Park (N.C.) Avery County (N.C) Subject The topic of the resource Brinkley, Bill Carroll--Interviews Avery County (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century Depressions--1929--North Carolina--Avery County--Interviews Farm life--North Carolina--Avery County--Interviews Christian life--North Carolina--Avery County--Interviews almanac Avery County car Depression Education Elk Park farming folklore religion tourism