We Planted Half the Mountain in Corn

Corn has popped up green in fields everywhere around the Plateau.  It reminds me that my Grandpa used to say, ‘We planted half the mountain in corn and grew enough to feed an old mule and a milk cow.’ While it may have been a slight exaggeration, corn has been a staple crop on the mountain since the first settlers arrived.

As a Future Farmer of America, I learned that the cross section of an ear of corn frames the organization’s logo because it is grown in every state in the union. In 2022, the USDA reported Tennessee alone produced 163 million bushels of corn. A man and a mule could manage 5 acres. He would hope for 30-40 bushels per acre while today’s farmers are netting over 100 bushels per acre. 

Corn is used in the production of everything from corn meal to crayons with high-fructose corn syrup sweetening a myriad of commercial foods. And of course we are increasingly dependent on corn additives to our fuel.

None of these facts were relevant to my grandpa – nor any of his generation – as they spent day after day with hoe in hand chopping out a corn crop.

I’ve always been told this mountain is not a good place to grow wheat. However, last year 725 acres of the grain were grown across Morgan, Cumberland, Fentress, Putnam, Overton, and Pickett counties. The University of Tennessee says that wheat can be successfully grown in every county of the state. Two or three generations ago, they held to the belief that wheat simply couldn’t be grown here.  There are only a couple of stories of people growing a little field of wheat. Once they had it harvested, they then had to figure out where and how to have it ground.

There was a grist mill for grinding corn in nearly every community. On any stream, a mill brake could be established and grinding commenced. As gasoline engines became more prolific, they began to be used to run mills as well.

It is my understanding (largely from the same source that taught me we couldn’t grow wheat) that grinding flour is a more involved process. I do know from my home-grinding operation, that cleaning wheat is fairly involved. Immediately after harvest, the chaff must be removed. Then, heavier particles must be sifted out. I wonder if these extra steps may have been as much of a deterrent as the climate challenges.

About 1930, the nearest wheat mill that I’ve heard of was in the area around Nine Mile. From my house, that’s an hour’s drive on paved roads running 55 miles per hour (or more).  Can you imagine taking a wagon load of wheat on that trip?

A hundred years ago, every family had a corn patch. They grew corn to feed that mule and milk cow my grandpa talked about. They grew corn to grind into meal for the predominate bread in a mountain home. They grew some corn to eat – surprisingly, this was the least of their uses for corn.

What we now call “field corn” (because to us it’s good for nothing more than animal feed), was gathered at the stage of “roasting ears” (that’s a full ear but not yet dried and by the way we universally pronounce that as roast’neers), parched and eaten. The best way to preserve corn was by making hominy.

Everyone in  the family went to the corn field – father, sons, daughters and mother. My cousin Clyde Whittaker remembered visiting his grandparents Billy and Ida Key,who lived in Martha Washington and he was taken to the corn field. Grandpa, his children who were still at home, and any visiting grandchildren, all headed to the field as soon as they’d eaten breakfast and tended to the stock. Grandma took a little time to clean up from the morning meal and do some housework then she joined them and chopped right alongside the rest of the family. As the noon hour approached, Grandma left the field early to head home and cook a hot lunch.

Without herbicides or tractors-and-cultivators, hoes were used to free the corn crop of encroaching and nutrient-robbing weeds.

When the corn matured and temperatures began to cool, the harvest began. No mechanized pickers entered these fields. Instead, the corn would be shocked up to await removal by wagon. Now, these shocks are cute when we build and display them with mums and pumpkins in October. They were essential in the mountain fields where wind and driving fall rains might flatten dried corn. So, a few stalks would be left in the ground to hold everything upright then surrounding plants were cut and leaned against them before being lashed together. Sometimes, corn would be brought into the homestead and shocked against a barn wall. 

Removing the outer shuck of a whole crop of corn was an occasion for a party – many hands make light work, right? Corn had to be shucked and shelled before you took a turn to the mill.

By wintertime, every family was surely glad to be finished with the corn crop and thankful for a yield sufficient to keep man and beast alive through the coming, cold months.

Memorial Day Reminder

Today is Memorial Day.  I will fire up the grill and throw on burgers and dogs and generally chill out. Many of you will spend the day at the lake (it’s a little chilly on the mountain to consider that) and lots of folks will spend time with family and friends.

I was reminded yesterday that the predecessor to Memorial Day was Decoration Day. Now, we’ve talked many times about Decoration Day here – and we’ll surely revisit that subject again.

I want to argue that Memorial Day is different – and for many of you who served under the Red, White and Blue I know it’s a much heavier day.

Just to recap, as I’ve mentioned here before, following the Civil War, Confederate widows and families sought to remember their fallen heroes and dedicate one Sunday each year to tend to their graves. This holiday quickly grew to cover all graves.  Every church designated a special Sunday when we’d dress in our best, travel to family burial grounds, lay flowers and reminisce. It is a joyous day with family, friends and neighbors.

Today, we have over 16 million, living veterans (according to USA facts). While most of those men and women will tell you that today is about their fallen comrades and not them, I still want to urge you to stop for a  moment and consider the price these vets have paid and the burden they carry for your freedom.

Many Americans today have scarcely been touched by war. As awful as the 9/11 attacks were, that was a single dark day for us. Many people around the world live with rockets and bombs exploding on a regular basis. Almost 22 years since the terrorist attack, we’ve cleaned up the mess and built a memorial. In Israel, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan…I can’t even make a whole list of the countries where you can see today the evidence of war and terror. If you will look around at your neighbors and communities, you can probably see the scars here too. Some Americans start each day strapping on a prosthetic limb or settling into a wheelchair because war stole a foot or leg. Maye the appendage was saved but no longer works properly. Have you seen eye patches or burn-scars?

And then there are the innumerable, invisible scars our veterans carry. The lost heroes we memorialize on this weekend were their brothers in arms. What is often only a name on a wall for us was a dear friend for them.

Today I implore you to remember them, both living and dead. Thank a veteran when you see them – if they are willing to wear a cap or shirt proclaiming their service then you must be willing to voice your appreciation. And please pray for them, especially today.

Camp Crossville a.k.a. The Jap Camp

Recently, I found myself on the grounds of the former POW camp in Crossville, Tennessee. There is precious little left to identify the original purpose of this facility about which I’ve heard stories my whole life. I was hearing the history from local people who saw these men as responsible parties for the absence of husbands, brothers, neighbors and friends. They remembered sometimes seeing the men, and fearing them. They told stories of lone women shooting escapees – even mistaking them for Yankees, which in legend was much worse than a Nazi.

I went searching for some facts and I found the Military Memorial Museum in Crossville and the Cumberland County Archives which were both incredibly helpful in the writing of this article.  The museum is a must-see for anyone interested in either local or military history.  And the Archives is a dream-stop for any history or book-nerds like me! (We’ll revisit these places in a future blog.)

The April 9, 1942 edition of the Crossville Chronicle presented Congressman Albert Gore’s announcement that Cumberland County might house “an alien concentration camp”

Wow, today’s readers would be aghast at the prospect of a concentration camp. Well, that is one of those words that has been rather hijacked by history.  The etymology dictionary lists this term from 1901 as a “compound for noncombatants in a war zone.” So, as distasteful as the concept was, both the camps that housed Japanese Americans and those for the European Jews were true to the term. However, the atrocities of the German concentration camps have forever twisted the term toward evil connotations.

Diorama of Camp Crossville - on display at the Military Memorial Museum

The news of a camp in Crossville seems to have hinged on whether “our people desired it” – and they did. In fact, the business men who met in the office of the city recorder unanimously approved the idea. The proposed facility was for non-combatants whose sympathies aligned with our enemies. And, entire families were expected.

The prospect of a government installation located on our mountain was very exciting to the impoverished people of the 1940’s. When a local office was setup for the government agent, a crowd was almost always present as they vied for newly available work.

As the decision-making proceeded, locals expected a whole town, that would be larger than Crossville, would be built. It would include a large hospital which many hoped would be a permanent fixture, possibly even a veteran’s facility when peace was restored.

On July 30th, the Chronicle announced that work had begun. By October, several hundred men were working to assemble 100 or more houses and the camp was now referred to as an “Alien Officers camp”.   None of the articles I read ever referred to Japanese prisoners, but the camp would forever be called the Jap Camp.  In fact, Bob Mitchell recalled local people lined up to see the Japanese when the trains began to arrive.  On December 3, 1942, the first 68 prisoners arrived by special train from Nashville.  They were mostly officers from Germany and Italy.  Armed soldiers were stationed at every crossroad in town because the Pentagon feared angry locals would try to harm the prisoners.

The plan always included the prisoners working and many local people remember truckloads of prisoners arriving in local fields to pick beans.  They worked in tobacco fields and cleared right-of-ways for TVA.  In the early days of the camp, the prisoners seemed to have enjoyed a very comfortable life. In fact, as I read about their rations and the pay they received for common chores, I couldn’t help but remember the lives the local people were enduring.

Former prisoner, Hans Albert Smolinski Alberston wrote that the kitchen supervisor was a German with hotel experience.  He began serving coffee and cake on Sunday afternoons with whipped cream. He added that, “Naturally, we could not write home such extravagances – nor could we tell that to our prison guards!” Wartime was hard around the world and their families back in Germany probably suffered worse than our mountain people.

When news of German war crimes began to leak, the prisoners in Camp Crossville felt the change in sentiment. Rations were reduced and guards were colder. The prisoners were made to watch news reels of the allies liberating German concentration camps and exposing the starvation and abuse.

Elmer Atkinson hailed from Clarkrange, Tennessee and served as an M.P. attached to the 7th Army.  He encountered the wife of one of the Camp Crossville POWs. She was convinced that her husband was enduring the worst of treatment in captivity. Elmer asked his interpreter to tell her he would gladly trade places with her husband.  Elmer also was assigned to guard the American soldiers who were liberated from German camps. His job was to prevent the emaciated men from eating too fast and killing themselves. He said they lost several men because they would sneak from one tent to the next and ate until they died.

Several of the POWs from Camp Crossville returned through the years. They shared fond memories from their time on the Plateau.  A couple even wrote books.  Albertson did note that even with good conditions in camp, they were very far from home. While mail was permitted, many of the prisoners had little news from their families. He writes, “Many a night one could not fall asleep because those tormenting thoughts tortured our brains and distressed our hearts! How often did we get up and walk through the silent nights along the barbed wire fences? How often did we cry or utter a silent prayer…”

The camp today bears little resemblance to the barbed wire enclosed prison.  As our mountain terrain is wont to do, the scrub brush, briars and weeds have reclaimed the cleared fields and roadways. The land has been repurposed as a 4-H camp and where once prisoners passed lonely days thousands of miles from home, now young campers learn woods skills, frolic in the pool and play camp games.

I Found Her in the Bean Field

A mountain man in search of a wife must consider many factors and a good work ethic is high on the list. Historically, life on the hardscrabble mountain farm was never easy and having a spouse who would pull her share of the load was invaluable.

This week I had the sad opportunity to attend a neighbor’s funeral and her husband told me, “I found her in the bean field. I just went to pickin’ beans with her.”

Now, this may not sound like a fairy tale beginning to you – and Hollywood will certainly pass on producing any love stories with that opening. However, I’ve heard many young men advised to look in the fields for a wife. It was sound advice and served that boy well. After a courtship that started over a bushel of beans, she worked alongside him for 62 years, raising vegetables and children, enduring hard times and enjoying the good ones.

We’ve talked a lot here about the green bean industry and the impact it had on Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau. There are surely more stories to write. In the 1950’s and ‘60’s, this cash crop provided summer work for men, women and children alike. For many years, my own grandfather ‘hauled’ bean pickers – that means that he would give them a ride on the back of his truck to the field. People have told me this, still appreciating the opportunity he gave them to earn a few dollars.

I will confess to you that when I was put in the field as a child – staring down an endless row of green sprigs that started out the morning soaked in dew and ended in scorching heat – I thought it was absolute child abuse. Years later when my sister and I worked in the same office, our supervisor asked what it was from my upbringing that gave us such a good work ethic – I told her we were taught to work from our earliest childhood. My mother thought that was the greatest compliment she could get.

Daddy Talks Turkey

I don’t know about your house, but with my family, as we sit around the Thanksgiving table, stories begin to flow.  My daddy always has a good supply of them.  As this holiday wraps up, I wanted to share some of his thoughts on turkey and Thanksgiving.

He doesn’t remember eating turkey very many times, while growing up on the mountain, and I wondered why There weren’t many wild turkeys around for many years – or maybe decades. Today, we have several of them around, probably due to the efforts of the Tennesse Wildlife Resource Agency.

Daddy does remember one turkey-hunting story.  Around 1930, Uncle Menzo Atkinson and Menzo’s sons, planned to meet some of their family and hunt on the north end of the county. Somehow, they missed the meet-up, but didn’t waste the opportunity to hung. They killed a wild turkey. As they wrapped-up their day, they happened upon the rest of their hunting party. That other group held up a mess of squirrel and Uncle Menzo silently reached into the wagon and came out with the turkey. They enjoyed telling the story as Aunt Medie skinned and cooked it.

Of course, you can have a feast without turkey. One year all of Daddys aunts and uncles gathered at Grandma Keys for a holiday meal and Berris Stepp, Hollis Henry and Vernon Roberts slipped of coon hunting. They were successful and came in with a big kill. Then they wondered what to do with it. Grandpa Berris quietly said, “Grandma will cook that if you ask her to.” Grandma Ida Key heard them and agreed to cook the coon if they would clean it good. The next day, the table was spread with plenty, including the coon. The Aunts were none too happy about that addition to their carefully  planned menu.

I would like to know who decided that the proper Thanksgiving meal was turkey. Aunt Cecil Hall was at Grandma’s talking about folks eating turkey and the girls all decided they ought to serve that as well. So they pooled their money, bought a turkey, and that was the first time Daddy remembered having turkey on Thanksgiving.

Whatever you ate, and I hope you had plenty, please count your blessings today. We have a fair share of trouble in this country, but we are also immensely blessed.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING