Carol Ansley interview with Amos Medford

The John Burrison Georgia Folklore Archive recordings contains unedited versions of all interviews. Some material may contain descriptions of violence, offensive language, or negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. There are instances of racist language and description, particularly in regards to African Americans. These items are presented as part of the historical record. This project is a repository for the stories, accounts, and memories of those who chose to share their experiences for educational purposes. The viewpoints expressed in this project do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of the Atlanta History Center or any of its officers, agents, employees, or volunteers. The Atlanta History Center makes no warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of any information contained in the interviews and expressly disclaims any liability therefore. If you believe you are the copyright holder of any of the content published in this collection and do not want it publicly available, please contact the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center at 404-814-4040 or reference@atlantahistorycenter.com. Interviewer Carol Ansley is niece by marriage to interviewee Amos Medford. Amos Medford starts the interview recollecting when he road tripped from North Carolina to Detroit, Michigan, with his cousin in his Model T to get rich. T. He applied for a job at an industrial plants, but there were few open positions during the Great Depression. A hairdresser hired him but was later kidnapped and killed by a gangster. Medford decided to return home to Asheville, North Carolina, and sold his car to buy a bus ticket. He hitchhiked the rest of the way home. Next, Medford discusses Ansleys great Aunt Della Fincher who lived near Hurricane Creek, North Carolina, where she planted corn on her family farm. He then talks about another relative, Major Cecil Brown of the Salvation Army, who taught children crafts and conducted religious services across the United States. Medford says that Brown once saw a corpse in someones front yard, and he then tells more stories about Browns childhood. Medford then talks about Martin Trantham and his son Joseph C. Trantham who lived all over the country, including Murphy, Asheville, Bent Creek, Fairview, Big Pine, Little Pine, Hurricane Creek, and Medowfork. Medford guesses that Martin Trantham had 26 children with three different wives. He then recalls Lee Trantham, Carol Ansleys great uncle who moved to Macon, Georgia, to work as a telegraph operator on the railroad. Medford shares more stories about Brown, then about Roy Plemmons and his cousin, Rindy Keener, who told stories about bewitching people. He concludes the interview by sharing short tales about a bear hunter, an old preacher, and his friend Joe. At the end he sings a short song about mountaineers. Amos Herbert Medford (1905-1969) was born to Joseph Anderson Medford (18571929) and Martha Jane Medford (ne Liner) (18691949) in Haywood County, North Carolina. His ancestors were Scotch Irish and English, originally from Medford, England. In 1931 he married Ruth Helena Trantham (1913-?), and they had two children: Joseph Howell Medford (1932-1993) and John David Medford (1938-2012). Medford was drafted into the United States army in 1940. For thirty years he worked as a foreman at Champion Paper Company in Canton, North Carolina; in addition, he served as Mayor of Clyde, as well as Secretary of the Haywood County Historical Society. Family history Way back about 1929 I decided to go up to Detroit, Michigan and try to get rich. All I had was a 1924 model T model roadster with no top. The fenders were tied up with hay baling wire and I took my cousin with me. He didn't have a spare tire of any kind' and his name was Frank Ratcliff from \o/aynesville. we left here one night about 11 :00. we got over as far as Marshall, North carolina and had a blowout and had to layover I all night in order to buy another tire the next morning.- We just had $20.00 apiece between us. So I got another tire for about $4.00 I believe it was and got as far as Newport, Tennessee and kerflu<y- went another tire. I walked about 8 miles, I guess, to the nearest station and found one on sale for $1.50, put it on, we drove on up through into Kentucky, stopped and stayed all night at the tourist court for 25, that is to stay out in the yard and sleep in the car. The next day t,e rambled on up through Ohio and after dark we parked in this little side road and we decided to sleep there. sif!;o,\ As it got daylight the next morning we found out we were~n a man's driveway - must have been a $40,000 mansion. So then we pulled out there on up and hit the Telegraph Highway. Cruising along about 20 mile' an hour, I guess; this patrolman he pUlled us over, had a big long red Buick with a sire\ on it and he said, "\Vhere you going 'boys?" I says, "Going to Detroit to get rich." He said, "You'll never make it in this trap." nOh yes t " I said, "I've already driven about 800 miles." He says,lrBelong to you?" I saidJ"Yes." He T~ a. said,n~on't kno\oJ" , I believe you stole it somet'lhere or other." , "No," I said, " I have a title to it here in my pocket." He said, "How come you don't have a tag on the front end." I said, "We don't have but one tag in North carolina." well, as I say I kind of a little bit nervous there. I had a pair of knucks, brass knucks, in my pocket _ thought he might search us and so I eased the knucks out while I \~as talkin to him and eased them out in the weeds. Anyway, he give me a clear bill and we went on, got into Gaddillac Square about 25 traffic lights strode out across there. ~ I ,crammed old Tin Lizzy in low gear, made a dive across there and got 2/3 of the way " across and the traffic lights changed and there I was. The cop says, "Pull her over." and I pulled her over. He says, "Where your front tag, son?" ftIbn't have one, North Carolina:' . He says," Ho'tv do I know. II He says, "You stole this car somewhere." I said, "No, got a title to it here in my ,pocket." "Okay, on. dOlm. " Stayed there 3 months and I guess I was stopped 30 or 40 times. While I was there tried to get a job. All those plants, Ford Notor Company, Briggs Body Works and all those. But it was right during the Depression and they lined up 10, 000 lines here and yonder. I saw one group of 10,000 people trying to get a job and theY turned a water hose on them to run them away. I wore my shoes till I wore the soles out and, had to put in 'pasteboard and I kept selling my clothes. I had a pretty good supply of clothes when I went up there and I was down to a shirt and a pair of pants was all I had left. Had some barber supplies - hairclippers, comb, and sissorsthings like that so I took the barber test and passed. ':Got me a job <lith John, the barber, big tall fellow with a long handlebar mustache. Later he was kidnapped by some gangster up there and killed. Anyway I stayed there one day and quit cause the thing was full of ~angsters all day long, their coat pockets all bUlging with guns and everything. So down where I stayed at the boarding house there were about 50 boys so I got to cutting their hair at 50 apiece, shaving them fo~ ~de my board like that, I ~) say for about 3 months .... I decided to come home. Sold my car, I got a price for it too- I mean it was a price _ I got a '$10 bill. Now I raked and scraped up enough money, and a glass of ~ milk. Got into Knoxville, Tennessee Saturday night about 8 :00 I guess it was. ,. The bus borrm'ed some from another boy there and had $17, bought a bus ticket to Asheville, $16.85. Took 3 days to make the trip - had l5 to eat on, a Ba~ Ruth wasn't going to go out till the next morning at 7:00. I was wondering where I was going to stay all night. The driver says, "Now you needn't try to stay on the bus:' ,JJ. I said, fI !/have to.1 He says, "If you do they'll put you in jail cause they come by the check these busses every night and drag them out - the busses are full of them - tramps, hobos and" l'V"\' /}.(j~ bums, transients, ~.r' So I crawled in the bus anY',ay - stayed there all night. Next morning the bus pulled out. 'I had visions of ham meat, buiscuits, cornbread, potatoes, beans, onions, crout, turnips - first one thing and then another being c;oked at home. I got home, hitch-hiked from Asheville about 25 miles, got there and no one at home, everybody gone nothing cooked. I went upstairs. went to .bed and slept 24 long hours. So that's the end of the ~troit trip. C~ p........~ --- Q80:) , r::~ NoH this concerns carol's great ~ Aunt Della. Her real name was Della Fincher, but she always went by the name of Della and she was very close and stingy they said when she was a young girl. The entire family were down on Hurricane Creek, North carolina I planting corn. ~ThiS little b:i.rd flew by - they called a tom tit bird and he flew by and picked this pumpkin seed out of her hand and flew across the river and she jumped in the river and almost drolvned trying to get across to get the pump~n seed bacl<. (The community of Hurricane Creek mentioned frequently in Amos Medford's stories, is a remote section many miles back in the mountains surrounding RaY"Ood Oounty. Several years ago when visiting relatives in Clyde, we took a trip back into Hurricane (pronounced Harrican) It was the first time I had seen the home of my cousin Major Cecil Brolvn (mentioned later) and the country in which my grandparents were born and raised. Hurricane was once a prosperous community due to the timber operations; at one time more than 20 families lived here. M great, great grandfather Merritt Trantham, a veteran of the ., Civil War, ",as the first posttna-ster.. .When.1 "as talking .nth my uncle, he showed In;' the document given to my grandfathe~ when he pecame postmaster. Today Hurricane Creek is ari I overgrol>U area, crawling "ith rattlesnakes. All that remains are some ghostly old houses and places with little sign there had ever been any life.} Major Cecil Bro'''' of the Salvation Army she had this area through North Carolina and she had a big place called Maple Springs "here she kept a lot of children there and taught then various crafts and arts and things and then she conducted services all over the country back there in the country churches and she had some very amusing tales to tell about her escapades and things there around Hurricane Creek, Big Bend, Laurel Creek and Laurel Fork, Shelton Laurel, first one place and then another like that. She said one time that they were going to have a funeral over on Big Bend, that's a various. sparsely settled part of the country about ~60 acres of land there and maybe 10 or 15 families liVing there at that time - they're all out and gone now - it belongs to the National Park. Well, she said they got over there to this place, had the corpse there out in the yard, front yard, and didn't have anyone to sing, probably 25 or 30 people~ there and this old man was named Rubin someone, I forget what his name was, Rubin Rathbone I believe it was, He says, "I'll go home and get my fiddle and make some music on it. II - She says, "1'Tell, thit's just fine, Rubin, you go get it," So they held the funeral up till he went over the hill somewhere there, got his fiddle and brought it back and he says, "lb", I'm ready to play," Arid she says, "Go ahead, Uncle Rubin." And he played of all things, "Love, 0 Love, a Careless Love~'. , Another time she said she went over in that part of the country to hold services on SUnday; she had a railroad iron and a hammer over there she hit it with to call them in to this certain sections where she'd hold services and she beat it on this thing, she called it the ding-dong. She beat on it a long time and a-waited and nobody ever did show up and she went down the road aways to this house, found this little girl in the front yard playing said, !'lfuere is everyone?" Why she says, "Q'hey're.,a:J.l out in the huckleberry patch picking huckleberries and it on SUnday." Of course they'd lost all track of time over there, see. And she also says when she's a young girl she was at home by herself on Hurricane Creek playing, she was about 10 years old and this man stopped by and says, "Hello there, little girl." She says t "Howdy. tt "'Whatts your name?" "Cecil, II she said, "cecil Brovm." He said, "Here's a half dollar I'm gonna give to you." She said, tt~at fer?" He says, "Your the damned ugliest girl I ever saw in my life!" and he went on do,,,,, the creek. So she started crying and cried all evening till her father came home and she told him about it and he said, "That was old cussing Charlie Roberts; don't pay any attention to that; he talks to everybody that-a-way." , , , Now, Carol Ansley, the little girl that is making this thing up for her classes is a great, great, great, great, great,grandfather (granddaughter) of Martin Trantham of Fayetteville, North Carolina; he was in the Revolutionary Har. He had a son named Joseph C. that later moved to Asheville, North Carolina and had quite a fe,. children and oneff the boys was named Jeptha. He made a will, this Joseph C. did and I discovered this will at the Asheville Courthouse one time and made a copy of it. This is the contents of the will as best I can remember: 'To my beloved wife, Elizabeth, and daughters, Marion, Jane, etc., to Joshua, Eli, and several other boys, a~d to my son, Jeptha - one small rifle gun which he took when he left home and to my other children - lands on the mountain and on Cane Creek.' So this old man Jeptha, he lived in several parts of the country, Murphy, Asheville, Bent Creek, Fairview, Big P.in.e, Little Pine, Hurricane Creek and Meadowfork - that's .mere he J&'i-ed and was buried about 1900 on Meadowfork, I believe it was, but anyway he had 26 children - he was married three times. I do not have the names of the children in front of me right now to tell you' their names, but anyway he had so many he named two John, two were named Joe, and tHO were named Sherman, due to the fact that the older boys Hould probably leave home or die and there would be another one born and they'd call him after the one that went away; so her (my) great~ grandfather was named Merritt; he had the first post office on Hurricane Creek, North Carolina in 1906 and also had a store"there and he '.as the first settler on that creek. That's a very remote section' of Haywood County - it's dOHn near the Tennessee 1ine about 40 miles from Haynesville, North Carolina which is the county seat of Haywood. He had'a post office and store there in 1905, as I said - stayed in business there till 1916 and then he moved to Clyde which is in HaY'.ood County, opened up a small store in Clyde, operated about 5 years and decided to retire and lived to be 91 years old and he died in 1936 and his wife who lived about 5 or 6 years 10nger,I think_ she was 90 when she died. Anyway, that was Carol's great great grandfather and her great grandfather was named John - John Calhoun: Trantham and he moved to Clyde in 1928 and died about 1951. Now this concerns one Lee Trantham who was a great uncle of Carol's here. He went off down in the Macon ,Georgia one time, got a job as a telegraph operator on the railroad, probably the Central of Georgia, I don't know. Anyway, he got sick with typhoid fever and he sent a telegram home here to Clyde for them to meet him on the train and take him back to Hurricane which is about 35 miles. Well, the old man, Merritt Trantham, he told Joe to light out one morning on that particular"~ay and get up to Clyde and hire a hack; we didn't have any cars then, you know, and bring Lee back home when the train rolled in with him. So Joe said he got, here about 4:00 in the afternoon, walked all that way from Hurricane and he couldn't hire a hack anywhere so he hired this hearse we had here in Clyde. The train rolled in, they had Lee in the baggage coach on a cot. They just slipped him out of the baggage coach and put him in the hearse. It took all night to get back to Hurricane - it was early the next morning when he got down there driving down the creek. His Mother saw the hearse coming, s'ays, "Oh Lord, poor Lee; they're bringing him in dead; oh Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord" she cried and screamed and took on. They came on down to the house with the hearse and opened up the doors and pUlled Lee out - of course he was on top. "Hello Ma" He wasn't dead at all: This concerns Major Cecil BrOl.u which I've talked about before. We all got together here one SUnday evening about 1:00, went down to Hurricane creek to visit her father who was batching dOl;n there in the old Brown house during the summer - had a crop out down there. We went down the creel, about 8 miles to the old home, maybe 9 miles, drove up in the yard. The old man was out doing the washing, hanging them on the line. This 11ajor Brown, very religious, said, "Daddy, what in the ,",orld do you mean i"ashing here on SUnday?" He said, "I thought it was Wednesday all the time - been down here so long I lost all track of time:" He kind of talk in a keen voice like that. He had a big old 45 pistol hung on his hip and an old holster and I said, "Uncle Joe, what are you doing with that pistol on you?" "Kill snakes with" he said, "I can shoot one's head off at 30 feet every lick:~! Joe Bro,vn was a character. This gentlemen by the name of Roy Plemmons, ~readowfork, said his cousin, Rindy, they called her- Rindy, Rindy Keener, I believe it was. Said she come down to their house one morning said; "~oy, I been bewitched during the night, this woman down the cre~< bewitched me." Said, "I understand that you can take the spell off a" person." Roy said, "You dadgone right I can Rindy; I can unbewitch anybr:d.!f ,", that ever come along. II "t-Iell, It she says, "please unbel..n.tch me then .. II "All right" he says, ''you do as I tell you." He says, "First got to pull your eyebrows out". He took a tweezers and pulled every eye . , I mean eyelashers, he pulled all her eyelashers out. "Now,1t he said, "that' s the first step.. II She said, "I thin\t I'm feeling better already; I thinK the spell is leaving me." "No, we're not done yet." Said, "Now you get down on the floor on your knees, put your elbows down on the floor." She did. He said, "I can plainly see that your backend is higher than your frontend" , said,' "the bewitching's over:" So Rindy kicked him right hard"and left. Now this tale concerns this old bear hunter up at the Highlands creeK. Back about 1900 he was took tourists oVer the country, talked, told them tales and things and he had a great big group around him and he'd hunted bears all his life and he's telling this big tale about shooting this bear one time. "Thar" he said, "thar the old bear sat right on his rump;" I just pulled down and shot him and he fell over dead." This fellow with him says, "Uncle Wid, nOt. I don't believe I'd talk in that strong a language to these ladies here. You should apologize to them." . . He says, "All right, I will. ",Ladies, gat.her round,. I want to apologize to you for 7 saying 'the bear sat on his rump'''_ He said, ! rt~ wasn't sitting on his rump, he's sitting on his damned ass:" .~. , { . Now this tale concerns an old preacher. His name was Hosea Mooney; he's a Methodist I ,.'.' , t ~ preacher - illiterate, couldn't- read' or rite, peOple had to read the text for hUn and he'd started from Iron Duff community over in the Crabtree community to a Methodist J '. convention and on the way he met the 'DeJil'on'this" bridge across Pigeon River - met him face to face said, "Git out of the way, Devil, I've got to go to church." The Devil says, "Your not going, Uncle Hosea, I'm going to be with you today." He saYs, "You're not, stand aside Devil, I'm going through." Said the Devil didn't move, said he grabbed him him around the leg and around the neck and pitched him over this bridge in this river; said he fried like a hot rock when he hit the water. He says, "Lay there, old Devil, I thought. you were a Baptist to start with anyway:" That's fact. Joe Collins - this story is about Joe, a good friend of mine, lives in Atlanta now. We went on a'picnic up on Pigeon River one afternoon in November. Pretty cool and ,ye decided to roast some einers, etc. Don at this picnic place here e had the fire built there was a big sycamore tree out over the river and it had a cable hung to it down on the SWimming hole with a stick stuck through it. Joe says, "I bet I can do a stunt there that you can't do." I said, "l.Jhat' s that?" He said, "I Can swing out over that water, swing back on the bank and never get a foot wet." I says, -"Try it." He did and he done it all right. He said, "Let's see you do it." I did and I dragged my feet through the ater and he said, "Uh huh, an old man getting old and decrepid. Yeah, you can't cut the mustard anymore. You can't raise your feet up " , He says, "Now 1'11 show you a new stunt. 1'11 swing that thing out over the swimming hole, stop it dead still, skin the cat, get up on it and swing it back to the bank and -jump off." He did. He went out, stopped the thing dead still over the s,.imming hole. . . It's about 10 feet deep, I gue,ss, swimming.hole was. So h~ p~oceeds to skin the cat, got his feet stuck up through his arms and the stick broke. F~ went out of sight and , that's deep water. He's an expert ,swimmer; he'd been raised on the ocean. But he was gone, gone - you see bubbles come up, bubbles, bubbles, bubbles; so I decided to jump in after him. About that time he shot to. the surface like a young pup beating the water - couldn't swim a lick- still had t,m sticks in his hand. So I took a long pole, stuck it in the river and pulled him out. He looked like a drowned rat. And meantimec his wife was bellowing up and do,.n the bank of the river, screaming, hollering, crying. I told "her to quieten down, I'd saved his 1ife, he's all right, gonna dry him off there in frobt of the fire. '''Yes, but,lf she said, "he had on his Sunday suit~" That's Joe for yeo We have a little ditty herein the mountains that we used to say: lie mountaineers we have long ears, We live in caves and ditches, We pound our socks upon the rocks And beat our wives with switches. Now this concludes this tape. I'm signing off now due to the fact that I have a sick headache. So bye-bye, carol, see you later. A PDF transcript exists for this recording. Please contact an archivist for access. Professor John Burrison founded the Atlanta Folklore Archive Project in 1967 at Georgia State University. He trained undergraduates and graduate students enrolled in his folklore curriculum to conduct oral history interviews. Students interviewed men, women, and children of various demographics in Georgia and across the southeast on crafts, storytelling, music, religion, rural life, and traditions. 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