Appalachian History

So we lived at a . . . we was renting off of a . . . some people that owned a . . . a lumberyard there. So on Friday evening I went out to this man that run . . . owned it and run it there, him and his brother. I said . . . I said, "I'd like . . . I'd like to have a job. I liked to work tomorrow," you know, on Saturday. He said, "What could you do?" I said, "Well, I believe I could do a whole lot." I said, "I'd do it right smart."

And he said, "Well, you come out in the morning." I . . . I went out the next morning and they had a big boxcar . . . boxcar load of lumber. Just big two by eigh-. . . sixes, eights, tens, you know. They just had room to shove me up in the top of it to start poking it out, you know? He had two men working on the ground.

So I shoved that out to them boys that day and they . . . they . . . men they were, and they stacked it and all like that. I went in that evening and he . . . he told me to come in. He said, "Clarence," he said, "what are you going to do with this money?" I said, "Well,"--Mr. Frye was his name--I said, "I'm going to buy me a pair of shoes." He said to his secretary, he said, "Write him a check for two dollars and a quarter."

And he gave me a check for two and a quarter. He said, "Now, Clarence, don't say nothing about this." He said, "My men out there, on-. . . I only pay them a dollar and half a day," see. That was back in the hard times. That was during the Depression, and I took the check and gave it to my mother. We lived right there close. She went to town, bought me a pair of shoes for two dollars and nineteen cents, and that was . . . you know, you only got one pair a year, you know. And so we lived . . . we lived there.

Clarence R. Wells,
b. 1911
interviewed July 16, 1991
Family Farm Oral History Project
University of Kentucky/ ID ff122_3.1


source: http://tinyurl.com/25p45j



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“There's a big old . . . there's a big old boar possum come in here. I . . . I couldn't believe it. I didn't know what it was. And it come in here and in four days, I believe, three or four days, he killed . . . in my chickenhouse out there he killed sixteen big hens. He come out there and he'd knock 'em off of the roost and all the . . . all he got was the head.

“And I couldn't figure what it was, you know. I thought it was a . . . I thought it must be a weasel or . . . so one night I backed my truck down there . . . I backed my truck out there and backed down there where I could see and I . . . I was sitting out there in the back of the truck a laying for him.

“And he come around the barn, come in there. He went in there, buddy, and he knocked two of them chickens off of that roost. He come around that barn so fast I couldn't . . . I couldn't tell . . . I looked . . . I said, "That looked like a big possum." Well, this dog was there and by time I come around he got gone, and that made sixteen of them big hens, buddy, in four days. He'd come in there and knock 'em off the roost. I'd go out there and they'd just be laying there.

“So I fastened everything up, and where you first come in the barn, you know, there . . . he . . . he had the hole in the lower side down where he come in the chickenhouse. I went out there and I set me a big trap, a big double-jaw trap down there, and sure enough I walked out there the next morning, there he was. Buddy, that . . . I mean that was a big long-legged possum. I never . . . I didn't know a possum would . . . would catch a chicken. And I had a big old ball peen hammer and I walked around there. Possums are hard to kill. And [chuckle] I said, ‘Son, I'm going to give you a lick for every chicken that you killed from me.’ "

Clarence R. Wells
Family Farm Oral History Project
University of Kentucky
http://tinyurl.com/25p45j


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