1 50 1 https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/f9490a75be15171c2f7ba6c3d8e6729c.pdf 682cac02b90053df266c2cbf2042bc0d PDF Text Text This is an interview with Mr. Hade Smith by Joy Lamm on April 1, 1973. tape is for the Appalachian Oral History Project. The Mr. Smith lives in Valle Crucis, North Carolina. Q: Whatsis your wife's name? A: Mildred Q: How long have you lived in the Valle Crucis area? A: Well, I was born and reared in this area right on this placei Q: When were yourborn? A: 1920 Q: And you were born right on the same land? A: Yes, I lived in a log house about 500 yards right back of this one. Q: What did your daddy do? A: Farm. Q: What did you all farm? A: We raised truck crops: Cabbage, potatoes, beans, and had alittle livestock and tobacco. Q: And you had truck crops back then? A: Well I just started off... I guess you might say I'm a little bit inclined toward woodwork, and I started off helping build houses. I started off actuilly remodeling them; this is the first house that I attempted to try. Q: You built the whole house? A: Well, principally I did get a man to help me lay the blocks and get it enclosed, but it is the first one I ever tried, and then I started off working... I worked part time, maybe help build, one house a year, or remodel a couple, still pursuing farming alittle. Q: Now, did you start the building after you came out of the service? �A: Yes, all this after I came out of the service. I was eighteen. I went into the service when About all the work I had done then was home on the farm, and a little bit of work with the school, working for the local people, odd jobs. My brother-in-law and me worked together a bigger part of the time and sometimes we would work two to five men, and we would build about five or ten years. I Suppose and then it go so hard to keep competent labor and we didn't contract scarcely. Once in awhile we would take a little contract job, but we just built for people and they would come and contract us, want us to d<s it on an hourly basis, get our price and so forth- do it that way. But it got so hard to keep -competent labor that way., The big building boom started in Boone, we started working for contractors, laying bricks, blocks, on the dormitories, courthouse, and those high-rise dormitories, the bookstore and such. Q: Now when did the building start? A: Well, the bigger part of it, I'd say, 15 years ago. biggest impact, faster growing one. anymore. The one that made the You can hardly find a competent person If you find one he has the very best wages that they will pay and they will keep him for that reason, and then, just immediately....well it was the winter after we built the Courthouse and the bookstore that I was contracted, wanting to know if I'd be interested in -taK,™ a job in Madison. It was in the dead of winter and building was slow at that time. finally reluctantly agreed to take it on a trail basis. Green? Why, I You know Mr. Ralph He was the, well, there was no chief magistrate appointed in the county, but he was our main stake, so to speak. He had had quite a little bit of knowledge of legal work through postal inspection and they got him a as one of the first magistrates and they had contracted two or three others, couple of them had gone to school and they backed out, so as a last resort. I started working as theat andl worked at that. IdLdwork with Miller's a little bit two or three days a week of the first year I worked as a magistrate. �Q: Well, Now what does a magistrate do? A: We write warrants, issue all warrants in the event that there is no magistrate available ?or some reason that they might be required to be out of the county and out of the office. Clerk of court of some of the judges would issue the necessary, would issue all warrants, set books and write up bonds, take waiver, take payment on'any waiverable events, fines, costs, thake acknowledgements on different instruments, perform liiarEiage cermonies, write up years allowance for surviving spouses and I guess thats pretty good general coverage of it. Q: Do you have to get up and go down there whenever they call? A: No, not unless I'm on call. of our calls. We have a man, Mr. McNeal, who takes the majority The only time we have office^hours on the weekend is from 7 to 2 on Fridays and Saturdays nights and then Mr. McNeal accepts the calls most of the rest of the time. We work it out at times so that I take a little and Mr. takes some. Q; What do you think is more interesting about your work as magistrate? A: Just meeting a cross section of the people from, you might say, all states, especially due to the fact that we have such a wide representation through the university. We meet quite a lot of the professors under some of these. We do get one occasionally"that we charge, but through traffic violations and just very minor; we do meet alot of people from what I say practically every -?r state and from every walk of life, so to speak, and well the good points out weigh the bad ones. I have made some rare acquaintances, some with millionaires and then some with paupers, and then some with nothing but natural born criminals, I guess I will always be. I know one night we had a man brought in, and Charles contacted me because he had the service of all the other lawyers in Boone, so we called Charles and before that I had to give the man 10 days in jail, and Mr. Larriter was his attorney, so Mr. Larriter gave me a pretty hard time. That fellow was so helligrant and arrogant, he starts a very vicious fight right in the jail. �Q: You mean a physical fight? A: Yes, he tore Gary Morgan's uniform off of him three times that night.. He had to change clothes three times. I gave him ten days in jail and Mr. Larriter, he tried to twist my arm every way in the worj.d to get me to recend that 10 day contempt charge, and I don't think I did it through stubbornness at all, even the Dean of Men at the college tried to get me to, but it just happened so that Dean Brooks was present and say it all and I first said I was going to give him 30 days and when I wrote it up I gave him 10 and Dean Brooks wahen I read it to him or had it read to him, Dean Brooks said" I though you said 30 days?" Brooks, If 10 days doesn't help him any 30 want either. just make it ten, Tbut I wouldn!£. Well, Dean So I thought I would I did finally work out an arrangement where I let him serve it on weekends in order to let him be able to stay in school, but it didn't go so will with Mr. Larriter, and we weren't as good friends , Didn't seem like--Mr. Larriter would sit around and talk with me or any thing like that, after. But Charles came up that night in behalf of this boy, and... Q: The same boy? A: No, it was a different one, so I just asked him very abruptly what he wanted me to do. I just figured it was another larriter deal, and with the other-guy. So Charles very appropri&V^y said, '•' I am not going to ask you to do anything, I just want some information." And it is amazing how something like that can develope respect for people. We do run into some instances over there that that I believe even our attorneys aren't aware of the seriousness of them. '-> •- Because of the conditions, there are things that you just can't overlook, and if I were to give a man 2 to 10 days and then turn around change my mind". ad say "Well no I It wouldn't look good on my records and first thing you know, I think people would loose respect for me. I have been very hesitant, very reluctant to give any one any active time. It is usaully the last resort to the person that has times. been warned eight or ten �THis fellow called me this morning, the officer told me this morning that If I had gotten to the jail when they first called me, they were confident that he would. have got some time. But they had been able to weas? him out, or get him unwound to extent that he didn't annoy me too much. I had to lay it down pretty clean to him, I thought I'd give him a couple of days after calling me is I'd been able. Q: What is the worst criminal that you can remember having dealings with? A: Well, I don't know Mrs. Lamm. I drew all the writings all the warrants on the Durham case-. I thought that was the most serious. murder warrants that day. I wrote 12 first degree I wrote three for each one, because each one was charged with killing the three. So we charged them individually with the killings of Jennie, Bryce, and Bobby. Q: W hen was this? A: It was about a year ago. I happened in February (Feb. $) and it was about 60 days later that the warrants were written. Q: Well, they weren't in jail were they? A: At one time, all of them. They were brought here and immediately moved. One of them stayed quite a while, possibly two of them, but they were kept under tight security. Q: How did you get the information to write the warrants? A: The sheriff, SBI agents presented it to me. They had compiled from their investigation and then the sheriff himself presented it directly for the writing them up. He was the one that actually had the warrant written in his name and he was in charge of all the information they had obtained. Q: Do you have any idea how they came about getting the evidence they had? A: No, I don't have any first hand information at all as to how they did'it. did have a little bit of information given me, but the way they went about obtaining it, I don't know. It was a long, tedious, drawn out process and I �and evidently they weren't too successful"in it. There was one other time, talking about the seriousness of charges, I guess I have written up more murder warrants in the last four years and four months than all the other magistrates together, I said something the other day. I believe that it's 23 murder warrants I've written since I have been over there, and I believe that this is the only one where a person was charged with more than one murder. But somehow they just fall in my lot to get most of the murder warrants. Q: Bo you have to talk to the person that is charged? A: No, not necessarily. brought before me. On a felontl charge, quite a few of them are not even I don't set bond on a felony charge. Thats left up to the district judge and solicitor for them to judge the criminal. and usually has it:in his court. He conducts it, • We set bond on anything other than capital, I said felony, anything other than capital felony, capital crime. On any other kinds of crimes, we set them all. Q: Do you think crime is increasing in this area or is there a chknge in the kinds of crimes? A: Well, thats hard to say. It's on the increase, of course I don't mean to say now on the increase in the last 3 months or 6 months, nothing like that to a great extent. In comparision to the per capita, probably is going to be more. Naturally, we've got more crime than we had. is a little down. It's starting to be bad. I think our road problem, crime Many more times road charges in the last year than we had over a two-year period. THe first year that I worked, I can't remember for sure that we had over one road charge. wrecks. Just not many Then the next year, last week we probably had fifty. fantastic. That's just Not many wrecks go by. Q: What about robberies and murders? A: Well, our murder rate hasn't been high. I don't think in this county. them I guess has been manslaughter, wouldn't they Charles? Most of We have had two or �three tried for second degree murder, I guess. Second or third for manslaughter, where they have been people died as a result of the crime, but I don't think its high for our county, compared to others. Murder and robberies, we had,a rash of misdemeanois not misdemeanors, that was robberies. ago. It'lasted about a year. Somewhere within 18 months They were not too many of them. I remember two or three service stations were robbed or attempted to be robbed. And I think they got policemen on it. that nature, That's hard to believe, but about three of four of them of We had an awful lot of breaking and enterings, larcenies such as that, misdemeanors especially. petty theif. There were an awful lot of students involved in"that stuff, It amounts to misdemeanor charges. And then our big, I tktnk our most serious problem is breaking and entering and larceny, don't you, Charles, because we are in this area where we have so many summer homes due to out tourists and the sports attractions that we have, the skis, the skiing areas and all. just a summer home area. We're People are away from there homes an awful lot. We had a breaking and entering yesterday or night before last, I guess it was. I don't fr* know if the investigation been completed yet, but it was break »^ .Cove Creek School, /\g students or students aids he charge, it will probably be a misdemeanor. But that is very common place around here. Q: Yeah, I was going to ask you what the effect the tourists and the development and all this had had. A: That always contributes to i-f, because the people are away from home, and they don't really secure their-property against a thief. against a thief properly. You can't secure property And then there are alot of people that just don't know how "to do it, even, what you might say the most essential methods of trying to secure in absence of tenants of people of residence. Q: Doesn't the old saying go that locks are for nice people? A: That's right. You can'lock your front door and if an honest person comes, he'll �8 knock on the door an if it's locked , most of them want even find out if it is locked. They don't get an answer they just leave on away. If a kid comes in and the doors locked and he's from a good family, he finds the door locked and he is a little inquisitive, usually he want pick the lock. But then if I put a secure lock, on this door, why all the theives would have to do is reach in and knock the glass out and come through and go around and get something. Q: Well, are most of your crimes committed by local people of students or outsiders? A: Well, the misdemeanors, larcenies, I would say they're about half and half, or we have quite a lot with , well I wouldn't say the college students would be half of it, but the high school student. Just the people I would say in the age bracket fnom 12 to 25. We have very few, other than just what I call just simply criminal people, criminal minded people that do these. Now you can go out to the school house or some of the other places where we've had breaking and entering and they'll take a truck over there and try to loud them up. as that is cone by professional criminals, or so I call them that. Such These misdemeanors, larcenies, petty thievery aid stuff like that are just by a group of young that are out for a time and they don't care what they do. been taught alot. social They haven't They come from the lower class people, most of them are on , vje-l-pa'-e-- , and it they see something they want they can't go ahead and buy, or any how that's what they reject to. It's theirs if they want it. Q: As far as their responsibilities towards other people. I just wondered felt about the changes in the area and the people. how you I know the communities used to be very small and closed in and relatively isolated from one another, and now people just come in from all over the United States and the people in the communities are very scattered. I just wondered if that has.... A: I don't know whether their values have changed or not, due to the fact that we have been moving at such a fast rate of speed or pace in every walk of life, but �but we don't have nearly as close contacts with our neighbors as people used to have and I think some of that is due to the fact that we have so many more. community has expanded. Our Our services to the community are public services, such as schools and such as that, they have been consolidated and extended. So many people come together in mass rather than in the small groups, where it uded to be. Now, I was educated, I say educated, I went to school. eehool house. I started off in a old two-room The first four grades, the first three grades of the elementary school was in the upstairs of an old two-room school house. The foucth through seventh three grades of elementary school was cone in the lower parfe, where you have the heat by two wood stoves. I don't know, I guess out total enrollment for the school was about I'd say average was around thirty students so you can see there is a big difference there now. Our elementary schools are conscblidated and there they have approximately 360 in Valle Crucis (can't understand) course takes care of the county. Then out high school of So, I think some of those things have changed to the extent that i6 is a (can't understand) but I don't know just how to relate them. I think people have as much concern as they used to have, but"they just ha^e a different way of expressing their concern. (Can't understand) Q: How do you feel about (can't understand). How do you feel about the developement that's taking place and all the people that are coming in. A: Well Q: Honestly A: That puts me on the spot. Q: Dovyou, can you, have you thought about how you feel about all the people coming j(Horn blows) Excuse me. in from other places and all the development? A: Well, let me sit back down. Q: O.K. A: In many respects I think it is good and it is going'to be good for our ecomomy, �10 and we are experiencing a lot of this new progress fsjom different fields all over the country. It has brought in a lot of undesirable things and yet we look at it another way, it will be very helpful. my feelings toward it. I don't know exactly how to tell you I guess in most of these things the good outweighs the bad, so regardless of how £ou look at it, especially in a view of progress it had been helpful. But on the other hand it has taken an awful lot from the individuality of the peole in the local areas, especially in the little out of the way places such as this, where you are isolated to a certain extent by the mountains and the type . roads, access we have too, but I just be afraid to answer you anymore in detail. Q! Well, do you think farming as an occupation is going to disappear entirely? Q: Right in this immediate area it is because we just don't have agricultural land suitable to compete, to seperate a farm in any competitive way. the one thing that hurts. Our way of life has changed so much, there's so many of us, due to the progress I guess. End of AOHP tape 52. That's �Tape 53 A: 11 As I started to say there, there are so many things that are required now as a part of our livlihood tihat we can't depend on the type of living that we had 25 or 30 years ago. Things are so highly competitive in an area like this, that it really would be out of the question. Now, there are a few farms in the county where people can make a pretty g'ood living at the time, but they have so many, there are so many other monetary advantages from other occupations 'where they can use farming as a sideline business,'Cattle farming, -is very good or you might say, grow crops. Q: So you think it will be possible to have kind of like a home farm, or a farm addition? A: Yes, there are going to be a few people not many. a feed place. to him. If .nothing else, they'll have ( someone not on the tape is hammering, Mr. Smith stops to talk The interview resumes after the hammering" has stopped). Q: What is this an old puzzle? A: That's one that my wife picked up somewhere and she had me make the duplicate of it some time ago to give someone and she's wanting me to make her that a wooden, what you call it, the x's and o's tic tac toe. This woodworks a little bit of my hobby, so I carve out stuff like that^and she wanted a, She said she wanted me to make her a tic tac toe board about 12 inches . Q: Would you like to tell me about some of these, and then we can take some pictures as we'11 know what is what. A: Yeah, I don't know. Are you interested in all of them? Q: Yeah, I don't know any of them-are. A: Don't know what would go back to the most ancient, but well this old;thing sittingrover in the corner there, that is a war battle loom, the old handmade loom, where they used to weave clothes on. Somewhere they laced each individual thread of the fabric between those little spacers of dividers there. I've seen them when the weavings done. I'm not too, You can still see it done in some of �12 the craft shops. out. I'm not farailar with that enough to tell you what it did come That came out of my wife's grandmother's. I think it was* and she kept it. Q: What are they made of? These are some kind of reeds of something? A: I guess that is a type of reed. Q: Charles, why don't you take pictures of these while were. I'm not sure what it is. Do you know how to— It has only one thing to adjust. A: Now, this evidently has been. it's been worn out. these. I started to say it hasabeen prepared, I guess But you see, this has been, unwrapped between each one of This is a cord of somevkind. Then it has had this cover sewn over it, here of course it's been taken off on this side. tell that. Q: I am sorry Charles. This is handmade. You can Did I move it wrong? O.K. get it while it is turned up this way. Come get it close up. Get it close up.. Charles: Q: Well, you don't have to. its A: If I get it any closer, I won't get it at all. You have to turn it more. You have to do this until . Get that part. I started to say you can tell it's handmade. I don't know what you call it. You can tell by this little, ah By this little piece at the end here. tell that is hand hued, probably with a pocketknife. You can It's had one on the other end, but this has been thrown around an old house or attic or something, Charles: A: WK^t is it? This is a war battle loom. You see, they put each individual thread through through there someway, and then they. That's all right. Just sit back down. I don't know if you have any idea what this little thing is or not. Thattis a little crude thing that they used to stir apple butter with in the old, big, brass or copper pipes. I said pipes, pots. seen hot tar when it is being cooked? Q: Yes If you've ever Have you ever �13 A: It'll bring up great big bubbles you know, and then they'll pop. Well, apple butter will do the same thing. Take a 20 or These will make that stuff boil. 30 gallon kettle and make enough to last a family half a winter for a large family. But making that stuff. I've seen it popping as high as my heacl, and they get these long handled sticks to stir the pot with so they can stand back out of range of those popping Q: , that popping, popping. Maybe we can leave those right in front and take some pictures of it some other time. Charles: A: Did the apple butter have a hole in it because of the thickness of it? Charles, I really don't know. Tttey might been just a sort of that, or it might have been to give it sort of a extra division when they were stirring it. Some pf them were solid and some of them had holes and I've seen these things with 8 foot handles, no I'm not saying they were that long. anyhow. I'll say 6 foot handles I can remember: my grandmother making apple butter in a big old copper brass kettle. And she had one with a handle/about 6 feet long. remember her making it a time or two in my life. a sheepshears, the family sheepshearc. hair ( can't understand). I seem to This is a haircutter. That The reason I bought this was to get sheep It was a little unusual. This spring in here, made like an N, Move it up a little, and I like this trademark on it. Q: Yeah, I noticed that too. A: Tells exactly what it is. it cleaned up. Looks like an acron here. This says, I didn't get You see it has shear steel, s-h-e-a-r steel. But over here now, it has a trademark that has a spread eagle, a trademark on that ribbon. is a company named J.C.W. Then here I have no idea what that was. Q: Do you know when this was made? A: No, I don't. Q: Or about how old it is? A: Those were used, oh, I don't even know how long. They had a sheep shearing outfit �14 clipper type thing that was, the power was produced by a hand crank and had a flexible cord to it, about 60 feet. No it didn't have a cord. thing with universal joints. 15 years old. End of Tape. Now, that came into use, I'd say, when I was about They started replacing these. ( Can't understand. It had a sectional However, I had a pair,of sheep clippers. Then Mr. Smith has to leave for a few minutes). � 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 Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Scanned by Wetmore, Dana Equipment Hp Scanjet 8200 Scan date 2014-02-18 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 Hade Smith, April 1, 1973 Description An account of the resource Hade Smith was born in Valle Crucis, North Carolina in 1920 where he was raised on a farm. Mr. Smith joined the armed service at 18 years of age and when he returned he did some odd jobs including building houses. He then became the chief magistrate of Watauga County. Mr. Smith goes into detail about his career and tells stories about local crimes he had to deal with as magistrate. Mr. Smith also talks about the changes in the area and the incoming of new community members, changing its dynamics. He then goes into great detail about his hobby of woodworking and points out a specific game he made. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Lamm, Joy Smith, Hade 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 4/1/2014 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. 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 document Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 111_tape52-53_HadeSmith_1973_04_01M001 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Valle Crucis, NC Subject The topic of the resource Watauga County (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century Farm life--North Carolina--Watauga County--20th century Local officials and employees--North Carolina--Watauga County magistrate Watauga County N.C. woodworking