CHILDHOOD MEMORIES

I was born in a big log house together with a large family of brothers and sisters. My Dads’ name was Harve Owens Sr. My Mothers’ name was Nan (Ritchie) Owens. I was named for two men. One was Joseph Ritchie, a brother to my Mother, and the other one was William Cornett, who lived at Dwarf, a great friend of my Dad, so my name primitively was William Joseph Owens, but later in life I left the Joseph part off and just carried the William. Now you know it is a practice the people buy babies name sake presents, so Joseph bought me a little brown hat with a bright buckle on one side, and I kept it a while but not long, I was only about two years old at this time. I wore my little hat off from the house, left it and the hogs tore it up, but I’ll never forget how proud I was of the present William Cornett gave me. He gave my Mother enough cloth to make me a dress. This cloth was covered with big yellow magnolia flowers. Ma made this dress just straight up and down to my feet. I walked out behind the house and looked down at myself and it just seemed to me that I was as big and as tall as anybody else. I couldn’t have been over two and one-half years old, but I can see that dress today.

My Grandparents lived just over the hill from our house and I remember hanging around my Mother’s bed when she was sick, crying to go over to Grandma’s and she’d say, “Honey, when Ma gets well she’ll take you over there, but she never got well, she died when I was about three years old, but I remember well somebody holding me up to look down in the grave when they were burying her.

Me and my next older brother to me named Jasper Owens would go over to our Grandma’s house ever so often when we were little. I have red hair and Jasper had dark hair, so Grandma had us named after two birds, and when she would see us coming she’d holler out YANDER COMES MY LITTLE SPAR HAWK AND MY LITTLE RED BIRD. Jasper was her spar hawk and I was her little red bird.

There was a woman in the country some where close that people called a weather witch, she told the folks how many snows would come in winter and all the bad storms in summer. This was the winter of 1892. I was four years old. Well it come springtime as always. March and April passed and May came in, but this woman had been saying that one more big snow had to come, and it did. On the nineteenth night of May there fell six to seven inches of snow. The timber was green, Dad had a lot of his corn hoed out. But the thing I most clearly remember was Dad knocking the snow off an apple tree back of the house. That was fun for me and caused me to remember. This woman’s name was Sallie Simpson. She also prophesied for a destructive hail storm on a certain day that same following summer. It was on Sunday morning my Dad got out and looked around at the sky and said, “Well, I think this is one time Aunt Sallie has missed it,” so he got his old plow hoss out and he and my stepmother went to Clear Creek Church up in Knott County. About 2 O’clock that day there come up the worst hail destruction in my memory. Hail balls as large as hen eggs. The creek at our place was something awful, washed all our rail fences off, drowned some young hogs, and of course everybody had geese to pick for making feather beds, us children were huddled up together in the house scared almost to death. We could look through the cracks and see hogs and geese go by. There was one old gander in the flock of geese that we all had a lot of sympathy for, he had a club foot. One foot was rolled up in a ball. We all thought a lot of that old gander, we called him “HOPPY”. Well in time of this flood all at once Jasper hollered out, “There goes old Hoppy,” and that was the last time we ever saw old Hoppy. After this bad flood Dad always believed in whatever Sallie Simpson said about the weather. One thing I didn’t mention, this same flood washed the Dwarf School House away.

After my mother died my dad married Uncle Barlow Engle’s daughter named Mahala. She was only nineteen years old, my dad was thirty-six years old. About this time he decided to build a new house about one hundred yards from our old log house home.

I remember Jasper and me playing on the fraim work before he floored it. I remember one evening we were all sitting in the shade back of the new fraim work and dad came around the corner with a big ground hog he had waylaid and killed in the corn field with his old time Hog Rifle Gun. That old hog looked big as a bear to me.

But the house was finally finished and we moved into it. By this time my stepmother had her first child, a girl baby, who is now Mrs. P.L. Johnson living at Hazard, Ky. The baby was named Elizabeth after her grandmother, Uncle Barlow’s wife. I remember sitting on the steps of the new house baby sitting my new sister while the others of the family carried the household plunder down through the garden to the new house. I remember trying to tell the baby we didn’t aim to live up there no more, we were going to live down here in the new house, it was strange and spooky. We didn’t have any kitchen to the new house so we cooked and ate up to the old house. Well, that’s what got me into trouble. In corn hoeing time my dad stirred early and late, so one morning I awoke down in the new house and I listened for a noise from someone else. I couldn’t hear a thing, suddenly I realized I was by myself. I became frantic. I grabbed my old britches, threw them on my arm and in my shirt-tail I made a dash for the old house. A little path went around back of the garden. It was just light enough to see it. I had both eyes shut most of the time, fingers in my ears. All of a sudden the big toe on my right foot hit a rock, down I came, but although I knew my toe was destroyed I came up running. Before I got straight I got to the house, blood all over my foot. Some of them got some salt, sut and castor oil and tied it up.

You see when I was small I was afraid of buggers . Old folks would sit around the fire and tell bugger tales and I thought all that bunkum stuff was real.

Our family always kept a flock of geese for pillows and beds of the feathers. In the springtime my stepmother would have a number of them sitting on eggs to hatch more. She had one old goose behind a stump up on the hill and the old gander stayed right close by her for protection. So I thought I would go up and investigate matters. I was about six years old. I went up on my all-fours. The old gander kept bowing his neck and blowing, I kept going up close and blowing back at him. I got too close, he seized me with his bill and began pounding me with both wings. Off down the hill we went, me trying to get loose and him pouring it on. The more I hollered, the madder it made him. Folks in the house heard the racket and came out and got him off me or he would have killed me. Now I never fooled around the old goose nest anymore.

Jasper, my brother, and me used to enjoy running up and down the creek looking for big wing feathers when the geese were shedding in the spring. We made green apple pop guns out of the stems. We would stick the big end of the stem in a green apple, bring out a plug and push it down to the little end and then push another plug down and the air inside would pop the first plug out with a bang.. We would kill house flies with these little pop guns. We called them GOOSE QUILL POP GUNS. A lot of fun and pleasure we had romping around the old farm.

Our family always kept a lot of sheep. I remember it falling my lot to hold the old sheep’s head down while my stepmother sheared the wool off. Everybody got in on the wool and picked the burrs out. Then the old hand cards and spinning wheel made it into threads for knitting socks, stockings and weaving cloth on our old loom for dresses, britches and coats. I also remember having to hold the goose’s head to keep it from biting the women folks while they are picking off the feathers. All these are fond recollections to me now.

When I was about ten years old, and my brother Jasper about twelve, us and other boys going to school were all the time trying to have something excitable and big as boys are, you know. We invented us a pistol. In the top of this pistol on the front end we dug out a place to put a [maybe] 45 cartridge shell. Then we filled a hole in the top of this shell and bound the shell in its place. Of course, we had no money to buy powder with so we slipped powder from dad’s supply in his powder horn, which hung on the shot pouch to his old hog rifle. Dad couldn’t tell much about if any powder was missing or not because he couldn’t see through the old cow’s horn. Well we would fill the 45 cartridge hull with powder and drive a wooden plug in on it. This would push some powder up in the hole we made. Then we would hold the pistol out and light a match and put it to the powder at the hole and that big bang put us to the heights of importance. We called these things TETCH pistols because we had to touch the powder with a match. For some reason or another Jasper and me didn’t have a tetch pistol one Sunday and we decided to stick a loaded shell in one of the house logs end. We cut off two or three match heads, put them in the shell, then poured powder in the shell. I pushed it till it would stick in the end of the house log, then give it a hard lick with the old iron shovel, but no sooner than that explosion went off I grabbed my thumb and the blood pouring, a piece of the shell had split my right thumb wide open. Well that scared Jasper till he went to crying. We got turpentine, salt, castor oil and tied it up. We knew we had to keep dad from finding out about it, and it was corn hauling time, so jasper said, “Now Bill, you stay as far away from dad as possible in the field and when we come to the barn I’ll throw the corn in the crib”. Dad never did know there was anything wrong. I can still see some sign of the scar on my thumb yet.

When I was small, about ten years old my dad would sent me to the mill with a sack of corn to be ground into meal for bread. I would sit on the old mule with my feet sticking straight out but I still felt big and important. The old mill was a water mill with hail rock burrs. The mill was put there by two brothers by the name of Combs, before I was born. One of the brothers was known as Cedar Head and the other as Pot head Combs. They were poor men financially but hard workers and were very ingenious. They made their own blasting powder and blasted a hole through the hill at Dwarf, KY, about 5x5 feet and about one hundred yards long through solid sandstone. They put in a grist mill for grinding corn and wheat, a saw rig for sawing lumber and a carding machine for handling wool. The machinery would pull a log on a little cart up from the pond into the saw rig and saw it into lumber. The saw was a straight saw, worked up and down just like an old cross-cut saw. I have watched them pull the logs up and saw them. I also went upstairs in the carding machine. Fine wool would be settled all over the walls and everywhere. The people that couldn’t have sheep of their own would go there and sweep down these flyings to spin into yarn thread to knit socks and stockings. We all called the mill The Old Tunnel Mill. I have gone thorough the old tunnel many times together with a lot of other boys. It was great fun. It was dark in there and water snakes slithering around your back. I am not aware of what became of old man Pot Head, but old man Cedar Head took something like arthritis and lay in bed fifteen years before he died. He was an Old Regular Baptist Preacher. I have been to his place when he would have church, he lay right in bed and preached. There is no mill there now, no house, it all became outmotted but the hole is still there for everybody to see and will be as long as time lasts.

When Jasper and me were just romping size lads we would go ground squirrel hunting. We went one Sunday with our dog and little ax to the top of the hill. We found a big grapevine which went loose about fifty feet up in a tree. We decided to cut it loose at the bottom and make us a swing, so we did. We gave a few trial swings just a little way out and decided it was all right, we made a few good long trips out and back, so I decided to give it all it would take. I backed away back and gave a big stove . When I got about thirty or forty feet out I felt the old vine give way over head and start coming down. I fell about twenty feet down through the bushes, still holding on to my grapevine, but for some unaccountable reason I never got a scratch. Jasper thought I was killed but he ran down hollering, “Bill, Bill, are you alright?” I said, “Well, I guess I must be I don’t hurt anywhere. He said, “Now we’ll not say anything about this, for you know dad will skin us.”

When I was about thirteen years old I decided to slip dad’s old hog rifle out and go squirrel hunting. So I put the old shot pouch over my shoulder which came down to my knees, shouldered the old gun up and brogued off up the branch feeling proud. About one hundred yards up the branch a squirrel had come down the opposite hill, across the branch and was going up an old rail fence. I threw the old gun down on the ground and tore out after it barking like a dog. I got so close on it that it turned back down the fence and went back from where it came from, with me right behind it still barking like a dog. I saw it go to a tree and disappear, so I went back after my gun, and went up to that tree. Sure enough I spied him laying on top of a limb. I got myself a good place of rest to shoot from and cracked down on him. Out he came, hit the ground running and half tumbling down the hill to an old hollow maple tree. I went down to the tree. I could hear him muttering, so I twisted him out and finished him with a club. I had hit it in seven different places with one bullet, but as I went back down the branch I was the proudest feller in the world. That was my first squirrel.

One summer when the corn was all hoed out, dad gave Jasper and me one dollar and fifty cents each. A big silver dollar and a fifty cents each. I don’t remember what Jasper did with his money, but I well remember what went with mine. I took off down the road to Dwarf, and met up with Cleveland Combs, an old school buddy of mine. He had sold some Cloverine Salve and got a premium, a bright gold polished watch. I had just showed him my dollar and a half, but I wanted that pretty watch. I asked him what he would take for it, and he said, “I’ll take a dollar and a half,” and there went my money. I took that pretty watch and headed for home to show it off. I would hold it to my ear. It sounded like a dog trotting through dry leaves, and quit ticking before I got home. Dad said, “Well, Billy, what did you do with your money?’ I showed him the watch. He said, “Now! Now! If ever I saw the like of that. An old premium watch, not worth one penny, and it wasn’t, but I didn’t know it until it was too late.

Jasper and me got big enough to clean up ground and plow, and a woman that lived over the hill had a pet sheep that had horns and a bell on. It would come over on our side ever few days. We were plowing up in the field one morning and heard the little sheep bell off down below us. Jasper said, “Now that’s Henna Holiday’s little old sheep. We went down where we could see and there it was taking our pea patch hill for hill. We threw rocks, but it done no good, just bounce a little and eat right on. We had to go off the hill and get it out. Jasper said, “I’ll kill that sheep if I live.” Well that coming Sunday we went ground squirrel hunting up the left-hand branch of our farm. We had a little Stephen Tip Up 22 rifle, just as good as your eye. We rambled around for a while and came to the top of the hill. We looked across a big sag in the hill and there stood the little sheep. Jasper said, “Alright old boy, right here I’ll take a crack at you.” He sat down by a log and said, “I’m just going to shoot at it’s head.” When he shot the little sheep jumped away up and we could hear the bell going down the hill, but all at once everything got silent. Jasper said, “We’ve killed that sheep.’ I said, Yes, now just who pulled the trigger.” We went around to see what the result was and sure enough there the little fellow lay stone dead. The bullet hit it right under its ear. We were both scared to almost nervous wrecks. We knew the woman would be over maybe next day looking for her sheep, so we put the little sheep in a big hollow log and left it there, but that night we decided that dogs and buzzards might give us away, and we went back next day and pulled it out and took it around the hill to dig a grave and put it in. We dug a big hole and sat down to think matters over, and I said, “Now dogs can scratch down in the dirt, and if they find that it has been buried they will know somebody killed it.” Just down below us was an old broken up dogwood stubble. So we took the little fellow down and put him up on that stubble, we run a dead snag up under the bell collar and hooked his horn on some more, and commented ourselves for good thinking. So Jasper and I were the only ones who ever knew what went with the little sheep.

P.S. There is no fiction in any of these things I have written. They are all true facts. Wm Owens