My grandfather, Eldon Smith ~ whom we called: Pap ~ made a living by moonshining. I believe I mentioned that in a previous post. What I didn't mention before, though, was that each year Pap raised one or two pigs to feed the family through the winter. At one time he also kept a cow or two for the same purpose, but I mostly remember the pigs. The trouble with Pap raising pigs was that when the time for butchering came around, Pap couldn't bring himself to kill the pigs, so that task fell to my dad, Bernard ~ whom we called: Pappy.
As my brother, Leon, and I grew up, we participated in the raising of the pigs along with the butchering. Well, I shouldn't really say that we "participated" in the pig butchering because Leon would only have been seven or eight years old when our family butchered its last pig, and I would only have been six or seven years old. So pig butchering day was more of a "run around and see what we could get into" type of day for me and Leon.
Did I mention that Pap couldn't bring himself to kill the pigs to be butchered? That was because he made the same mistake every time he got two pigs in the spring: he'd name them. And once the pigs were named, they were his friends, not potential breakfasts and suppers in December. So through the year, as Sally and Tom (or Benny and Jane, or Smokey and Gertie, or whatever) grew up, Pap would fatten his pigs with slop and cornmeal, watching them grow fatter and fatter until that day in mid-October when strips and chunks would be cut off to be renamed bacon and loin chops, and intestines would be washed thoroughly to become the casings for the ground-up sausage.
In his later years, Pap kept his pigs in a pigpen (a twelve by twelve foot building) that stood on my dad's property. Pap had sold the portion of his property on which his own barn stood a few years earlier, and so the pigs became my parents' responsibility. I don't know if my parents considered the pigs to be theirs (because they were kept on their property, they might have), but Leon and I knew that the pigs were Pap's ~ until butchering day, that is. So me and Leon were helping Pap with his pigs when we carried the buckets of slop to them, pouring the mixture of milk and left-over food scraps into the trough, overtop the two or three scoops of corn meal that would first be spread out evenly in the trough bottom.
We loved helping take care of the pigs, and I was just big enough. If I stood on the trough edge, resting my belly on the top of the trough wall, and by stretching as far as I could, I could pat the pigs on their scratchy hairy backs. Me and Leon did that while the pigs were eating ~ they wouldn't stand still for you to touch them otherwise.
So what about that thing shown at the top of this post? It was called a pig scraper (or a hog scraper by some people). The purpose of the pig scraper was to scrape all the hair off the pig when it was being butchered. That concept ~ to scrape the hair off when the pigs were being butchered ~ was kinda lost on six and seven year old Larry and Leon. We thought that the pigs liked having their backs scratched ~ while they were living. I knew that I felt real good when my back itched and mom would scratch it for me.
So we assumed that the pigs probably felt real good too when Leon and I scratched their backs for them. And what better way to give the pigs a good scratching than to use the pig scraper. The only thing was that Leon and I didn't realize that it probably hurt the poor beasts. Every time I see a pig scraper I can't help but be transported back to the 1960s, and in my mind I can almost smell the slop and cornmeal. And each time I experience that kind of vivid memory I feel sorry for those humble pigs who grunted and snorted while two little boys scraped a few hairs off their backs.
When the first Europeans began to move into the North American wilderness in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, they had to construct houses in which to live. That was easy enough for me to say, but as the old saying goes: "It's easier said than done."
The fact of the matter was that it took quite some time and energy to cut down the number of trees needed to build even a modest-sized structure. If the immigrant family was from Western or Southern Europe (which included Britain, Spain, France and the Netherlands), they probably intended to build a wood-frame structure. If the immigrant family came from Northern Europe, they would no doubt have intended to build a log cabin structure. Either method of building would take a little time to accomplish, especially if it was to be performed by the family's father and maybe a son or two.
So what was a family to do in the meantime for shelter? The most common solution to this dilemma was a structure known as a half-faced camp. The half-faced camp consisted of three walls and a roof made of light saplings spaced somewhat close together and interwoven with brush and smaller twigs. The fourth, open, side of the structure was higher than the rear so that the roof sloped from front to back and directed any rainwater away from, rather than into, the interior space. Outside of the structure, but close to that open side, would be kindled the fire for cooking and heating. The half-faced camp would be used as the family's home while the house was being built. The illustration above is of a form of half-faced camp published in 1859 in The Prairie Traveler, by Randolph B. Marcy. Instead of saplings, brush and twigs, the structure consists of a piece of fabric stretched to the ground from supporting branches.
In the North American Colonies, especially in the ones settled by English colonists, the English language bulged with words and phrases that developed and grew from the environment. Such words and phrases have become known as homespun words and phrases. The temporary structure that the immigrants constructed, the half-faced camp, gave birth to one of those homespun phrases (or rather, hyphenated words): half-assed.
Dictionaries give the meaning of the hyphenated word half-assed as something that is done only partly, or done without much effort, resulting in a product that is deficient in some way.
I'm sure that nine out of ten people that use this word to describe something in their life that is rough, or otherwise misses the mark in terms of preferred quality, do not have any idea that the word they have used was derived from a shelter against the weather.
In the days when the menfolk would be out in the fields plowing, sowing,
tending or reaping their crops, when the housewife wanted to call them
in to dinner or supper, she had three ways of doing so. She could give a
strong, loud call to them, hoping they would hear. She could send a
young child out to tell them to come in. Or she could blow on one of
these things - a dinner horn.
This tool is made out of
tin. As the images show, it has a slight bit of detail in texture, but
it was not made to be pretty; it was made to be functional.
The tin dinner horn has a permanent reed, and there are no holes on which the user can play different notes. It has only a single sound ~ something like a duck's quack.
I got my first blacksnake whip from my maternal grandmother, Grammy Nofsker. I was six or seven years old at the time. I was both fascinated and repulsed by the whip. It seemed kind of scary, but being a young boy, I wanted to play with it. Grammy kept the whip in a drawer of a dresser that she had in her apartment, and every now and then she'd let me pick it up and hold it. I was a little hesitant each time I first looked at it, because it actually did look like a snake to me, and it took a bit of gumption for me to extend my hand toward it.
I was forbidden to swing the whip around through the air ~ I might hit something and break it ~ so I was satisfied with just holding the whip in my hands. And you ask ~ how on earth was that possible? I lived in the day and age when children respected their elders, and when we were told not to do something we listened. Period. No need for a 'time out', you simply listened and behaved. The few instances when dad took off his leather belt and gave me a sharp slap across the behind was remembered when I even contemplated misbehaving. So I would just hold the whip and imagine what it would be like to 'crack' it over the heads of a team of horses to make them trot ~ or better yet, gallop ~ a bit faster. I didn't have any video game or YouTube clip to show me how a blacksnake whip should be handled, but I had seen movies in which the hero used his whip to spur his horses to pull the carriage faster. I could easily imagine what it would be like to swing the whip gracefully through the air without actually having to do so ~ against my parents' or Grammy's orders ~ and breaking something valuable in the process.
So what was a blacksnake whip?
Numerous leather strips were braided together around a steel or iron rod to make the handle. The braiding of the leather strips was continued for a length of about two or three feet, and then they were attached together somehow so that a single strip only extended about another two feet. The single strip of leather was usually tied into a knot at the very end of the whip. The braiding of the many strips of leather gave a mottled coloring which, in addition to the shape, did indeed look like a snake. The texture of the braided leather strips resembled snake scales and the various shades of brown of the leather resembled the coloring moreso of a rattlesnake, copperhead or milksnake than a blacksnake.
A website I checked out recently noted that a blacksnake whip was one that did not have a piece of metal in the handle, and therefore could be completely coiled up, resembling a coiled snake ready to strike. The writer of that website apparently did not come from the Appalachian region of Pennsylvania, because the things that people around here always called blacksnake whips had metal rods in the handle.
The blacksnake whip was not the twenty-feet long whip like the one that Indiana Jones cracked in the movies of the same name. Blacksnake whips tended to be only between four and six feet in total length. They were used by a carriage driver to spur on his horse(s) by a slight swat rather than by a skin tearing rip.
The idea of the whip, when coiled up, resembling a coiled snake is an accurate description. That's why, when Grammy Nofsker would let me open up the dresser drawer, and my eyes would first catch sight of the whip, I would experience a momentary sense of fright.
The object at the top of this post is only two inches long, but despite its small size, it has nicely sculpted features. My paternal grandfather gave it to me when I was young, and so I have treasured it for at least fifty years.
What the picture above shows is a detail from a cigarette holder made from the material known as Meerschaum. Both, cigarette holders and pipes were carved from meerschaum.
Meerschaum is a substance composed of hydrous magnesium silicate; it is a mineral of the soapstone family. The substance has been known, down through the decades since the 1650s, variously as seafoam, sepiolite, White Goddess, and Venus of the Sea.
At one time it was thought that meerschaum consisted of petrified sea foam, hence the one name given to it because the word meerschaum is a German word meaning simply 'sea foam'. It was given that name because it was found to be floating on the Black Sea, pieces of it having been freed from the sea bottom to rise to the top because of its porosity.
Although it has been claimed that the name was assigned to the material as early as 1475, the first pipe to have been carved out of meerschaum is claimed to have been one made in the year 1652 by the French artist Louis Pierre Puget.
Another claim has been made by a Hungarian nobleman, Count Andrassy, who received a piece of meerschaum in the year 1723 from the sultan of Turkey, and who gave it to a cobbler at Pesth who carved pipes out of wood. What is known is that by the 1750s there was a great demand for the material and for pipes carved from it. Objects, such as pipes and cigarette holders made from meerschaum were expensive, and therefore a commodity purchased or commissioned by only the rich. Very often meerschaum pipes and cigarette holders were not purchased to be used for smoking, but rather simply for the sake of the artistic carving.
The meerschaum material was very well suited to being carved in fine detail. That made it possible for this tiny man to be so nicely carved.The fact that the mouthpiece is broken off never bothered me because I never intended to use it, anyways. I always considered it more of an artwork than a smoking tool.
The object that I found at a local antique shop was made totally of wood, except for a metal pin and a screw. It looked old, having the start of a wonderful patina which gave the impression that it had been used for quite some time. When I first found this old wooden tool, I made the decision to purchase it simply because I liked its color and the simple beauty of the wood of which it is composed.
The tool is stamped with the name: Stanley; the town of
manufacture: New Britain, Conn, USA; and the model number: 64.
A check of the item revealed that it was called a marking gauge, and that it was used to scribe lines on wood at a set distance from an edge. It would scribe the line parallel to a reference edge or surface. A common name of this tool was: scratch gauge.
The tool is made of beech wood with a thumb screw that was usually made of boxwood. A brass pin on the one end protruded through the 8" long arm that is 3/4' square on cross section. The arm was marked off and incised in inches and sixteenths of an inch up to the six inch point. A small metal screw beside the pin allowed the pin to be replaced and kept tightened in place.
The long arm, more specifically called the bar or beam, is passed through a thick wooden plate, more specifically called the main body or headstock, and the thumb screw loosens and tightens to allow the main body to be moved along the length of the bar and then tightened in place. A piece of brass plate, cut in a fancy shape, and attached to the side of the main body facing the scribing pin, provided a smooth, slick edge to run along the reference edge or surface.
The No. 64 model of marking gauge was produced by the Stanley tool company circa 1912. It is a nice example of hand tool produced in an era before mass-production resulted in dull, boring and simply utilitarian tools.
It is very nice to be able to get in the car and drive just two miles to the store where I can pick up a half gallon of milk any time I wish ~ no hunkering, squeezing, or pulling. You know what I mean, don't you?
The little stool shown above was owned by my step-grandmother, Luella. Although she was my paternal grandfather, Eldon Smith's third wife, she came into my life shortly after my maternal grandmother, Grammy Nofsker, had passed away. And so, even though Luella was not a blood relative, she most certainly became my true grandmother. She shared with me her memories, and sometimes, as in this case, some cherished items from her life.
Luella (Burket) Smith lived a hard life ~ much like the life that most women from the Pennsylvania Appalachians lived during the time reaching from the earliest settlement into the late-20th Century. It was a life of taking care of the children, cleaning the house, cooking the meals, washing the clothes, besides perhaps having to work outside the house to help make ends meet. (For those young readers who never heard that phrase, "making ends meet" was another way of saying "earning enough money to pay all the bills".) Luella worked for a number of years at a railroad repair facility to help make ends meet. She told me stories about the work she did ~ such as having to roll barrels of parts and materials from one location to another. My own mother took a job housekeeping for a local dentist to help make ends meet. It was a time before mechanical conveniences, so work was, in many ways, tedious and tiring ~ and not only for the men.
The three legged stool that is shown in this post was an object that my grandmother, Luella, used just about every day for many years. This stool, and a tin bucket, were the two things that were used for the job of milking cows. Luella would carry the bucket to the barn. There, she would grab the little stool ~ perhaps by the oval hole at the stool's front edge ~ and position it to the one side of the cow that she intended to milk. Then, hunkering down onto the stool, she would get into position to begin the task of coaxing milk from the cow. Luella would grasp one of the cow's teats in one hand by encircling it at the point where it extends from the udder with her thumb and forefinger. With a gentle, but firm, pressure, Luella would tighten her grasp between the thumb and forefinger, and then in an even rhythm, the teat would be encircled by the middle finger, the ring finger and finally pinkie. The grasp would be released and repeated a couple times with the first few squirts of milk being directed onto the floor. This ensured that any bacteria that might have grown from the last time the cow was milked would be cleaned out of the teat. After the first few squirts, the metal bucket would be placed under the cow, and the milk being squirted out would be directed into the bucket. In case the cow gave a kick while being milked, Luella could move quickly off the stool and out of harm's way.
With the milking completed, Luella would stand up, picking up the little three-legged stool with one hand and placing it out of the way, perhaps by hanging it on a nail stuck in one of the barn's support posts. The little three-legged stool was the perfect type of seat for this job. A four-legged chair with a back would have been difficult to handle when the milking was finished. A bench would have been equally unwieldy. Luella could easily grab and lift the little stool with one hand. She would probably grab the handle of the bucket at the same time with the other hand to lift it out of the way before the cow had a chance to kick it.
Since a cow needed to be milked twice a day, the little three-legged stool shown above was, no doubt, used hundreds, if not thousands of times. The little stool served a useful purpose for a job that was very important in the lives of the Appalachian people because there weren't many stores close by to which you could drive for a half-gallon of milk any time you desired.
