Revival Meetings

Revival MeetingsMy church has been in revival this week and coincidentally there’s also a revival meeting in the early chapters of Gracie’s Babies.  So, as we met an evangelist and prayed for the Spirit to move, my mind had already been on a “protracted meeting” and I couldn’t help but make a mental comparison.

You may recall in some of the writings by Callie Melton that I shared here last year, she talked about preachers coming into the neighborhood to hold “protracted meetings” – I like that term.  I guess that while we schedule special gospel meetings for 3-5 days they opened a revival and kept it open so long as the Spirit was moving.  And the Spirit did not disappoint in many of those meetings. 

Meeting in brush arbors or hot church houses, the crowd would often be standing room only.  Families walked, rode a mule or drove rough wagons sometimes for hours to attend.  Even in the 1980’s I remember revival meetings that were standing room only, and we didn’t have air conditioning for those August dates either. 

Today we’ll drive to church on smoothly paved roads in temperature controlled cars, sit in cool sanctuaries on padded seats.  There will be electric lights so no matter how late the preacher holds you, there’s little chance you’ll be sitting in the dark and a sound system ensures even those in the back of the building clearly hear the sermon.  Yet we’ll be lucky to have half the seats filled (okay that statement was void of any faith, wasn’t it?)

In the upcoming book, the Clear Creek Baptist Church hosts a traveling evangelist who preaches for a full week.  Gracie, the book’s protagonist, has to miss the first meeting as she attends a sick neighbor.  While she’s deeply blessed to be at the bedside there’s a pang of regret at missing the revival service – and all the action her sister comes home to report.  Not to fear though, Gracie and her family will make it to every other meeting that week as will young people from all of the surrounding communities.  It’s clear that the Bible lessons are only part of what those teens want from the services yet they eagerly participate in that part as well as the fellowship with old and new friends alike.

In fact, the meetings of old truly did revive those attending.  I’m not sure what’s changed in our crowds or our hearts since then but I sure wish we could get back to something close to the spirit of those protracted meetings.

Pausing for Gracie

Tennessee Mountain Stories will pause for a few weeks as I work to complete Gracie’s Babies.

I’ll be telling you more about this story in the coming weeks but right now let me just say I hope to have it in your hands in time for Christmas shopping!

In the meantime, I’ve got a few visits on my calendar and I’d love to see you at one of them.

Saturday October 26th I’ll be at the Cumberland County Community Complex 9 a.m. - 5 p.m..

Then November 9th 9 a.m. - 3 p.m. at the Art Circle Public LIbrary in Crossville. I will be speaking at 10:00 if you’d like to stop by.

Thank you for your patience with me as I take this little break from blogging.

Old School Angling

Hunting and fishing are great sports and are widely enjoyed around the world today.  Yet we know that in days gone by hunting and fishing were much more about feeding a family and the forests and waterways have well provided for the people of Tennessee through the years. 

Fishery biologist Justin Spaulding wrote an article for the Tennessee Wildlife Magazine (Spring 2019, pp12-15) that talked about Old School Angling and I found the practices so fascinating that I wanted to share some of the article with you. 

The following is quoted by permission of the author and I thank him sincerely for sharing it with us.

Tennessee has a long history of fishing and not all of it involves traditional bait and tackle.  We often imagine the modern angler with an expensive boat or hundreds of dollars invested in waders, not to mention the garage full of gear.  However, when times were simpler, anglers fished to put food on the table using whatever means they could.

Many of these methods were developed before reservoirs altered Tennessee’s landscape.  River fishing was all that was available, and anglers pursued abundant fish like suckers, buffalo and catfish.  Some of the more notorious methods – explosives, poisons, electricity and firearms – have since been banned to protect fish populations the public and fishermen.  In recent years, some primitive approaches like archery and hand grabbling have returned to popularity   Many legal methods are still available for the Tennessee sportsmen wanting to broaden their tackle box.  Since these techniques enable the angler to harvest large quantities of fish in a single trip, the use of these devices are more strictly regulated than typical fishing gear…

Fish traps are perhaps the oldest method of fishing, while ancient cultures used several types of fish traps, the slat basket (or slat trap) is one still used in Tennessee and that remains commercially available.

Slat baskets can be constructed from wood, cane, or modern plastic materials.  The design is fairly simple, with one end acting as a throat to funnel fish into the other end called the catch area….Instructions for making baskets can readily be found online, or they can be purchased from tackle shops for under $100.  Slat baskets cannot be used within 100 yards of the mouth of a river, creek or slough…

Most slat baskets are used to catch catfish, but will catch redhorse and other suckers as well….There are a variety of options and homebrews for bait, but the most common are waste cheese, cut-bait, dog food, and soybean meal…A well placed and well-baited slat basket will easily pack a cooler.

In a song, Hank Williams, Jr. once immortalized running a trotline as a rite of passage for rural culture…Trotlines are pretty simple, consisting of a mainline attached to the bank or a float with baited droppers every few feet.  Trotlines are chiefly used to catch catfish, but anglers should be prepared for a little bit of everything.  Trotlining is one of the few methods other than where gamefish maybe kept according to local limits.

Trotlines must be checked at least once per day, but a good spot will yield buckets full of catfish in a morning or afternoon if you don’t have time to run a trotline camp like they did in the old days.

Each year, massive schools of fish congregate on the swift and clean river shoals in an effort to produce another generation of offspring.  Spawning runs normally start with the first big rain event in February and can last until early May.  Most rivers produce a healthy run of native redhorse, suckers, and buffalo, but the best will be so plentiful you would think it possible to walk across their backs to the other side.

Snagging, the process by which fish are taken by a hook (most commonly a large treble) with a swift jerking motion, is often employed during spawning runs.  Historically, snagging large river shoals or creek pools for redhorse, buffalo, and suckers was very common.  This tactic may appear distasteful to some at first glance.  However, it is a long practiced tradition in many communities and most fish caught using this tactic are eaten and not wasted…

Back in the 1940s, TWRA (then the Tennessee Game and Fish Commission) even operated a redhorse hatchery in Shelbyville to support a local shoal fishermen association. Most shoals are clear enough that anglers can identify the individual species from the bank, and will cast to a particular fish.  Fishing too soon after a heavy rain may be difficult because of muddy and swift waters.  IN the past, some nimble anglers would dangle from trees and merely lift the hook into the rooter (mouth) as a fish would pass by.  Typically, few non-gamefish are inadvertently snagged, but if caught, they must be released…

Regardless which style you try, if done correctly, a skilled angler will likely be able to catch more fish than can be eaten at once.  While old time anglers certainly enjoyed running a trotline or snagging a shoal for redhorse, at the end of the day they were working to feed their families.  Most anglers today are picky and eat only a few species of fish because they are easier to clean and require less preparation (i.e., crappie and walleye).  However, with a little practice and work, many of the less desirable non-game species can still be quite delicious.  Redhorse, white sucker, freshwater drum, and buffalo have thick scales and Y bones that need to be removed, but proper cleaning will make it worth your while.  A fish can be scaled in seconds and working around the bones requires a little elbow grease and a bit more time.

Treating the Sick

Here’s a major spoiler for my upcoming book:  Someone will suffer from a life changing illness.  So I have to research such a thing and try to understand not how it would be treated in the 21st century, but what medicines and procedures would have been employed in 1890.  That leads me to making some pretty strange internet searches and if you’re a conspiracy theorist who thinks the government is looking at my searches, well you won’t be surprised if spooks show up at my door one day.

Most of us don’t have Arsenic on a pantry shelf; if you’d lived 100 years ago, you might’ve.  Historically this naturally occurring mineral has been used for everything from cosmetics to wall paper and even medicine.  So if you were a patient in 1890 and the doctor pulled out a bottle marked As (the elemental symbol for arsenic) he really has your best interests at heart and no intention to do you harm.  Today we’d just be petrified to even see that bottle in the doctor’s office.

I have an excerpt from an old medical book (and I’m sorry I can’t properly cite it for you but the title is not included) which describes Progressive Muscular Atrophy which is still a recognized, albeit rare, neurological condition.  In years past it was commonly known as Wasting Palsy.

While this old book recognizes that internal medications will do little to treat the condition, it still offers the following advice: “a generous diet along with the administration of drugs such as arsenic, strychnine sulphate and cod-liver oil is indicated in all cases”.

Of course there were a number of medicines that seem strange to us today and our forefathers (or more likely our fore-mothers) treated many diseases with medicines provided by the land.  That’s something I would dearly love to learn more about!  When you read about doctors prescribing something we now consider poison it’s not hard to wonder why Appalachian women preferred to collect their medicines in the woods and creekbeds.

Plowing the Corn

I can’t see a crop growing here but this appears to be a cultivator that Uncle Lester Key is using.

I sent my daddy a note that I needed to talk to him to learn how to raise corn.  Now when I send out a request like that I often get chastised with, “Ain’t I taught you nothing?”

Well I have been listening and watching – I’ve even written down some notes on how best to plant a garden and when things ought to be planted or harvested.  However, I’ve seen only demonstrations of horse-drawn-farming and when I’m putting together a book I want the details to be right.

How many times do you hoe corn?  So that’s not a question a modern farmer can answer – they wouldn’t know how to handle a hoe.  Yet for generations on the mountain, where corn was the primary staple for both man and beast, hoeing corn was a ritual enjoyed by every member of the family.  Of course we had plows – I mean we weren’t Neanderthals, right?  So I’ve certainly seen a corn crop cultivated (I’m trying to carefully differentiate the terminology here because we call it all plowing but there’s plowing to turn the ground and then there’s plowing to cultivate a crop).  If a farmer today hooks up a cultivator to his tractor, he will pull into a field and put his wheels between two rows then set that implement down over 2 or 4 rows (I think they have some big ole’ 8 or 10 row cultivators but I’ve never seen one).  However, the horse drawn setup puts all three parties - horse, plow and man – in the middle of two rows of the crop. 

There is an obvious advantage here despite the many difficulties of working with a horse or mule.  The crop can be cultivated even when it’s quite high.  Daddy says he’s seen farmers plow corn as tall as a horse’s back.  You just couldn’t do that with a tractor.  In the modern era crops are planted and weed control often sprayed over the soil.  This is supposed to eliminate the need to cultivate.  It doesn’t always work.  While it’s a little intimidating to imagine following a horse through the size of some of our fields today, if you’re looking at a crop overtaken by weeds, setting down a cultivator in those rows begins to sound like a pretty good idea.

I feel compelled to mention that in recent years the use of herbicides is becoming taboo.  The more we want to go organic the popularity of cultivators will again increase.  We may even need those hoes again, have you still got one?