ALEX.: They all lied though. They might lie about
you. I want the truth. How are you, Sir? But, uh, what have
you done? Are you getting up in years, are you?
JACKSON:
Well, I'm coming on to seventy-six. I'm seventy-six now. Soon to be seventy-seven.
ALEX.: Pretty young.
JACKSON:
Yeah.
ALEX.: That would make you being born around
nineteen-hundred, yeah?
JACKSON:
Eighteen ninety-nine or somewheres along there.
ALEX.: Eighteen ninety-nine, huh?
JACKSON:
November 20th, just before the new year.
ALEX.: Is that right?
JACKSON:
Yeah.
ALEX.: They didn't have income tax in those days did
they?
JACKSON:
No.
ALEX.: Aw, so they couldn't call you an income tax
deduction, could they?
JACKSON:
No.
ALEX.: No, no chance them calling you that, that's
for sure. You know, they say today if you have a
youngster born at the end of the year it's a good deduction.
JACKSON:
Yeah.
ALEX.: I guess in those days it didn't make any
difference.
JACKSON:
Yeah.
ALEX.: Well, where have you worked?
JACKSON:
Where have I worked?
ALEX.: Yes, sir. You have worked, haven't you?
JACKSON:
No, not very much.
ALEX.: Not very much.
JACKSON:
All except for three years, I've been right here.
ALEX.: Is that right?
JACKSON:
I went to work here when I was nine years old.
ALEX.: Yes, sir.
JACKSON:
I'd work enough to get me a pair of overalls and then I'd come back.
ALEX.: Yes, sir. You never could make a pair of
overalls here. Well, I noticed some pigs out in the field. Must not have been bringing much money in those days.
JACKSON:
Huh?
ALEX.: I said I noticed some pigs out in the field.
Must not have been bringing much money in those days.
JACKSON:
No.
ALEX.: Well, so you've lived here on this farm then.
JACKSON:
Yeah. For the most part.
ALEX.: Worked on this farm.
JACKSON:
Yeah. Blacksmith.
ALEX.: Is that right?
JACKSON:
Yeah. My father was a blacksmith.
ALEX.: Yeah.
JACKSON: He's beat on the anvil, burn the coals a
little bit. Shoed a few horses, too. Look at the butcher knife I made just the other day.
ALEX.: All right. Not going to use it on me now.
I'll have to go down off through the gate there. You
still doing a little blacksmith work?
JACKSON:
Aw, just a little bit.
ALEX.: You got a shop here?
JACKSON:
Oh, yeah.
ALEX.: Oh yeah.
JACKSON:
I have the anvil I hit my first piece of iron on sixty-five years ago.
ALEX.: Is that right, sir? Yes, sir, that looks to
me like a pretty-good knife. Is it sharp?
JACKSON:
Yeah. It ain't that sharp. I need to spit that and get it a little bit wet. Maybe it will sharp.
But that's a nice knife there. Look at that other one. I
like the feel of that knife. Made them out of twelve
inch files.
ALEX.: Made them out of a file.
JACKSON:
Yeah.
ALEX.: Yes, sir.
That's a nice knife there. Shaped like a Bowing knife a little.
JACKSON:
Yeah.
ALEX.: Yes, sir, those are nice knives. They sure
are. Well, you've done some blacksmith work, too, huh?
JACKSON:
Oh, yes. Shoed some horses too. Mules.
ALEX.: Did you do that off the farm or did you do it
strictly on the farm? Did you do it for other people?
JACKSON: This used to be quite a place. Used to
be a lot of sawmills. All over the country and about 14
teams.
ALEX.: Yes, sir, right in here, huh?
JACKSON:
Wagons to keep up for them. Loggin'.
ALEX.: I'm telling you. Back in the twenties?
JACKSON:
Huh?
ALEX.: In the nineteen twenties?
JACKSON:
Yeah, along there.
ALEX.:
Nineteen ten?
JACKSON:
Yeah, from there on up.
ALEX.: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. You saw a lot of timber
cut then did you?
JACKSON:
Yeah, there was a lot of timber here. Old man McClintoch had sawmills all over the country, you know.
ALEX.: Yes, sir.
JACKSON:
Greenbrier County and he had many fine sawmills at one time runnin'.
ALEX.: Yeah.
He kind of had a lumber company or something, didn't he? Run out of
Charleston or someplace?
JACKSON:
No, but ole Judge was his brother.
ALEX.: I see.
JACKSON:
Old ____ McClintoch. He went bankrupt. But Judge was his brother.
ALEX.: Yeah.
JACKSON:
But the McClintoch you're talking about, he ran a lot of mills.
ALEX.: Yeah. Oh yeah. You remember the names of
any of those mills? What did they call them? Did they have any special names?
JACKSON:
No, no. Just sawmills. Just sawmills. Well, we, down in our country, we usually named them after
the hollow they were in, or the bench, wherever they
were located. We called them the Woodruff Hollow Sawmill or
something like that. Well, they've got them all over
the country here.
ALEX.: I see. You're just talking about right in
this immediate area. You're not talking about the cash job
or anything like that.
JACKSON:
No, no.
ALEX.: You're just talking about the area of
Buckeye.
JACKSON:
That's right.
ALEX.: They go back on the head of Williams? Can
you get back on
Williams River through here?
JACKSON:
On the Scenic Highway. You can up the mountain. They own a thousand acres on the other side of the
mountain here.
ALEX.: Yes, sir.
JACKSON:
The McClintoch.
ALEX.: Well, your
job pretty much is to keep the mills going then. And a blacksmith.
JACKSON:
Oh, yes. Shoud the horses. ____ wagon wheels. Mostly run the garden tiller now.
ALEX.: Is that right? Do you got a good garden?
JACKSON:
Fair.
ALEX.: It's been late this year, hasn't it?
JACKSON:
Oh, yes.
ALEX.: Yeah, it's been late. It sure has.
JACKSON:
Well, it didn't rain this evening. Just a little shower. It's the first we've had for a good while.
ALEX.: Twenty-four
hundredths of an inch. What you had here today.
JACKSON: Yeah. I don't know.
ALEX.: Twenty-four hundredths of an inch.
JACKSON: Yeah.
ALEX.: I just measured it. You've just had about
ten-hundredths of an inch in all June.
JACKSON: Yeah.
ALEX.: So it's been pretty dry.
JACKSON: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
ALEX.: Well, I
guess you've had as much rain as Bill Buckley over there. I was just over there.
JACKSON: Yeah.
ALEX.: They have a measuring station over there.
JACKSON: Yeah.
ALEX.: And I told them, I'd send some rain ahead of
me, and that I'd brought some in with me. I told them I'd
ordered it to come and it'd be right behind me and sure
enough it was. We needed it, we sure did. You got any favorite stories you like to tell?
JACKSON: No, no, no, sir. No, sir.
ALEX.: You don't tell stories?
JACKSON: You have to get out amongst the neighbors if
you get any tales out of 'em.
ALEX.: Yeah, I bet that's so; I bet that's so.
That's a pretty good chimney there.
JACKSON: Yes, sir.
ALEX.: They must have run out of sandstone there and
had to go to brick, didn't they?
JACKSON: Well, that
there, I don't know how long that's been built. An old friend, Overholt
built that. George Overholt. An old Irishman, Conaway, hauled
the mortar and carried it for him, and he wanted a drink
of water. And he took the mortar bucket and he went
down the stream there and he brought him back a drink. And
he called him a damned, Irish, son-of-a-bitch. And he said
you damn, Dutch, son-of-a-bitch, good enough for ye.
Put ____ in your ____. Didn't have a cleaner bucket than
the mortar bucket. Yeah, I 'spect that's so. I 'spect
that's so. It's been there a long time.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah. It's before my time, a good bit.
JACKSON: Yeah.
JACKSON: Bill McClintoch was a captain in the war. He
first married into a family there at Mill Point, and that's how they come to this. Matthews. Old Miss McClintoch
was a Matthews.
ALEX.: I see. Matthews were in and around that
Mill Point area, weren't they?
JACKSON: Yeah, that there
old judge was born in that big white house right on the hill back the old mill
down here. It was a one-story house at that time.
ALEX.: Yes, sir.
JACKSON: That's where the old judge was born.
ALEX.: Tie up any maples this spring?
JACKSON: Huh?
ALEX.: Did you pull off any maple syrup this spring?
JACKSON: No, no, no. They're too damn hard to work.
ALEX.: I figure you could take a pretty good hard
day's work. Anybody who can get into a blacksmith's shop
beating on an anvil can stand a little heat.
JACKSON: Huh. Did you ever see how much grip I got?
ALEX.: A pretty good grip. Pretty good grip. Yeah,
yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, that's a good
grip. Is that ____, that's only your left hand. Are you
left-handed?
JACKSON: No.
ALEX.: Let me see your right. That's pretty good.
Still pretty good grip. Yes, sir. You've got a pretty good size hand. Now I've got one of those big hands
too, you know. Got those short stubby fingers, but I wear a size 11 ring. Eleven and a half.
JACKSON: A what?
ALEX.: Size 11 1/2 ring goes on my finger.
JACKSON: Hell, I've never had a ring on my finger.
ALEX.: Well, I don't wear one very often. I had a
jeweler one time tell me that it was an 11 1/2. He
didn't have one that big in the store and he had to make me
one. Yes, sir. Have you seen some logs come out of
this hill over here?
JACKSON: Logs?
ALEX.: Yes.
JACKSON: Oh, my God, yes. This whole country here was
timber at one time. Sawed here across the river and
Buckeye.
ALEX.: Yes, sir.
JACKSON: Vanmill.
ALEX.: Yes, sir.
JACKSON: The railroad went up the river yonder and
plum back into them hollows.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
JACKSON: Yes, sir. Awful big timber.
ALEX.: What was the average?
JACKSON: Well, I don't know. The biggest I know of
was seven foot across the stump.
ALEX.: Yes, sir. That's pretty good size. You
couldn't shake hands across that logs, could you?
JACKSON: No, sir.
ALEX.: No, sir.
JACKSON: That log is still over there if it ain't
rotted down in the ____.
ALEX.: Yeah. A lot of ____ in a log like that.
What kind of tree was it, you remember?
JACKSON: Chestnut.
ALEX.: Was it chestnut?
JACKSON: Yeah.
ALEX.: Oh, my goodness.
JACKSON: A lot of chestnut used to be in this country.
ALEX.: Yeah, they
got all blighted out in the twenties and thirties, didn't they?
JACKSON: Yes, sir.
ALEX.: Yes, sir.
JACKSON: Red oak.
Big red oak. This is awful big timber back through here. There was some here below the
railroad you couldn't get and they just went off and left
it and gave to old man McClintoch and he had a sawmill over
here at the church. They skidded it down the road here
for four and six head of horses to a log and so on.
Chestnut. That's how big it was.
ALEX.: They probably had to quarter it up to get it
through the saw, didn't they?
JACKSON: No. Now, sometimes they do that.
ALEX.: Yeah. It takes a man two or three hours to
saw one of those down with a sharp cross-cut, wouldn't
it?
JACKSON: Yes, sir.
Yeah, when you take one of them six-foot cross-cuts and you have about that much on
each end to work with, it took a time chiselin'.
ALEX.: Yeah. There's still a lot of good sawyers
around.
JACKSON: Yeah.
ALEX.: I saw some
over in Webster County the other day. In contest. They take off a twenty-inch cut
pretty quick. I think every cut they get off in ten
seconds. That's pretty fast. About as fast as a power saw,
those fellows. One fellow over there sawin' and
choppin' was seventy-three years old. I think he came in
third. He was still able to swing that five pound ax and use that
cross-cut. He was using a five pound what I call a woodman's ax, something like a broadside ax,
you know.
JACKSON: Double-bitted ax?
ALEX.: No, it was a single-bit.
JACKSON: Single-bit.
ALEX.: Single-bit and what you might say something
like a pole ax but with more fan.
JACKSON: Yeah.
ALEX.: He had more of a fan like a broad-side, you
know. You probably made a few broad-sides. Have you
ever made a broadside ax?
JACKSON: No.
ALEX.: You know what I'm talking about, I know. You
couldn't and live in this country. Those broadsides.
You had to be a pretty good man to swing one of those.
Do a little ____ with those I guess. I don't know if I
could keep up with one or not. It would probably whip me.
JACKSON: I used to saw with a crosscut.
ALEX.: Yes, sir.
JACKSON: And you're writing a book, you say?
ALEX.: Yes, sir.
JACKSON: What kind of damn book is it going to be?
ALEX.: Aw, it's
going to be a wild one, I'll tell you. It's going to be a wild one.
JACKSON: Are there going to be some fancy tales in it?
ALEX.: Well, I got a couple. I got a couple. I got
one today from a fellow by the name Sharp. Gave me a batch of tales. You got any?
JACKSON: No, no. No, sir. I don't understand it.
ALEX.: You know I sent the people head of myself
here to let a couple out back over here someplace so I can get some advanced publicity for my panther stories.
Just like I sent this rain today. Yeah, I tell you. I've been interviewing a wild bunch of fellows. I
interviewed a fellow by the name of Cecil Houchins on Back
Mountain. You know him?
JACKSON: Who?
ALEX.: Cecil Houchins. No. He's ninety-five.
JACKSON: No.
ALEX.: Odey Cassell.
JACKSON: Odey Cassell. I know Odey Cassell.
ALEX.: Well, I talked with Odey. Yeah. And, oh, I
just talked with Charlie Cromer.
Charlie Cromer.
JACKSON: Charlie Palmer?
ALEX.: Charlie Cromer.
JACKSON: I've heard of him but . . .
ALEX.: Charlie ran No. 7 Shay.
JACKSON: Yeah.
ALEX.: On the Cass
job. He's living up at Durbin. I talked with him yesterday.
JACKSON: Yeah.
ALEX.: Yes, sir, I did. I've been all over this
county. People getting about 45 years young or younger, I've been running up on 95. I've been talking with them. They've been giving me a little bit of information
here and now about the sawmills.
JACKSON: Yeah.
ALEX.: Trying to get it all together and put it
down.
JACKSON: Now I'm going to
get married now when I'm eighty and start raising a family.
ALEX.: I interviewed a woman yesterday who was
eighty-three. She was looking for a man. Maybe I can match
you up.
JACKSON: Now, by God that's what I've been watching
for.
ALEX.: Yeah, she was pretty sprite too.
JACKSON: I might want to raise a family, you see.
ALEX.: Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
JACKSON: The oldest ____ babies, you see.
ALEX.: Yeah. Do you know a name for any of those
mills?
JACKSON: Huh?
ALEX.: Do you remember the names of any the mills
you said? What was the name of that Buckeye Mill over
there?
JACKSON: Oh, that was
American Collier Lumber Company that had that one.
ALEX.: American Collier Lumber Company?
JACKSON: Yeah. They had one on . . . oh, down next to
Charleston up on a place there.
ALEX.: Maybe up on Lens Creek maybe.
JACKSON: Cabin's Creek.
ALEX.: Cabin's Creek.
JACKSON: Yeah, they had one there.
ALEX.: Yeah.
JACKSON: Yeah. I used to have a book. I loaned it
out. It had pictures of all these darn mills along the Greenbrier River.
____ I bought it at Cass or Castle. ____ was sold them. And I loaned it to a fellow
that's over in, what county is it that McCoy lives? Wayne
McCoy?
ALEX.: In Maryland?
JACKSON: Yeah, it's in Maryland. Yeah, he borrowed
the book from me.
ALEX.: Yeah. When was it published, you know?
JACKSON: Oh, I don't know. Several years ago, it . .
.
ALEX.: Clarkson?
JACKSON: Clarkson.
ALEX.: Clarkson published the book? Yeah, I've got
that book.
JACKSON: Yeah, is it, uh . . .
ALEX.: Tumult on the Mountain.
JACKSON: Yeah.
ALEX.: Yes, sir, I'm got that.
JACKSON: Yeah.
ALEX.: Yes, sir.
JACKSON: ____ drives in the river.
ALEX.: Yes. Did you ever do that kind of work?
JACKSON: No.
ALEX.: Work the river?
JACKSON: Never even
learned to swim. My daddy told me to stay away from the river until I learned to swim,
and I never did learn to swim.
ALEX.: Well, you
were smart to not get in the water if you didn't know how to swim. Well,
you took good advice, sound advice.
JACKSON: Yeah.
ALEX.: When was that mill over there at Buckeye?
JACKSON: Huh?
ALEX.: Do you remember when that mill was at
Buckeye, the exact dates? Or close?
JACKSON: It must have
been along 'bout 1916, 15 or 16, along there. Something like that.
ALEX.: When did it go out?
JACKSON: Well, it was there two or three years.
ALEX.: Yes, sir.
JACKSON: Something like that.
ALEX.: Where did
they get most of the lumber? Back in the hills?
JACKSON: Yeah.
ALEX.: Did they get any from the other side of the
river?
JACKSON: No.
ALEX.: All of it came from back in the hills.
JACKSON: Yeah, that's right. You talked to Bill
Buckley. You said he ought to know. The mill sat on their
place.
ALEX.: Yeah. Oh, yeah. He told me.
JACKSON: Right below the
bridge. Right when you crossed the bridge. They had an overhead skidder, skinnin' the logs from this side to the river, to the mill.
ALEX.: They took a
lot of those logs down the river in the earlier day, though, didn't they?
JACKSON: Oh, yeah.
ALEX.: Down to where? Ronceverte, was it?
JACKSON: Yeah.
ALEX.: Rainelle. Did some go to Rainelle?
JACKSON: No.
ALEX.: Rainelle is not on the river, is it?
JACKSON: No, it, what was the name of that big mill at
Ronceverte? It was there for years. I can't think of
it. My daddy, he was a young-like fellow. I remember when
he worked on the drive, driving the logs down the river.
ALEX.: Yes, sir. Ran those down in the spring of
the year most, huh?
JACKSON: Huh?
ALEX.: About the spring of the year.
JACKSON: Yeah, it would flood. Ain't no water like
there used to be, you know.
ALEX.: No. No, there's not near as water as there
used to be.
JACKSON: No. Since they cut the timber out there ain't any water much.
ALEX.: Yeah.
Well, I'll uh, kind of get on out of your way here. But I've enjoyed visiting with you.
JACKSON: Well, yeah. I'm glad to see you.
ALEX.: Wonder if I can take your picture.
JACKSON: Huh?
ALEX.: Wonder if I can take your picture.
JACKSON: Take my picture?
What the hell do you want with a picture?
ALEX.: Oh, I don't know.