Being A Joines, Transcription
(Numerals in parentheses denote the footage count for the analog video, starting from the "beep" or from numeral two on the academy leader, with time conversion calculated at thirty-three feet to the minute, followed by elapsed time in minutes:seconds with time conversion calculated at 24fps for the streamed video.)
CRAWL TITLES: John Elree Joines, a gifted tale teller, grew up in the Brushy Mountains of western North Carolina. Here the early American backwoods life lingered until nearly the Second World War. "Frail" Joines's experiences and stories give a glimpse of the traditional Appalachian community and of the changes that in a single generation have swept it away.
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FRAIL: Right there's a scar and right there. And there's one on the back of that finger, and that finger's stiff. A 'possum bit me one time right in the joint there, just stuck a tooth in there and one there and about three drops of blood run out. And it set up infection and my whole hand just rotted out in there, and the doctor lanced it. He first lanced it there and there, and then he had to lance it down here. And you could just see all the leaders in my hand, it just all . . . And it stunk like a dead horse. You couldn't hardly stand to be around me. Then my brother, when I was right little, he chopped the end of that one off with the ax. The hog got out and I run from the hog up on the woodpile, and he was up there chopping around with the ax, and I stuck my hand under where he was chopping and he whacked the end of that finger off. Put them even and you can see how much he got of it. And then . . . That's a wart right there on that hand, just an old wart that come up there a few year ago. And that little scar there, I got that in the Army, that was the only one I got in the Army. And outside of that, I reckon that about covers the scars on my hands.
DAVENPORT: What about your neck?
FRAIL: I got a little scar right there. And the end of my nose has been cut off. One on my tongue. I bit it. And got one on my leg there where my brother shot me with a shotgun. Shot the calf of my leg off. Got . . . They's some shot in my leg yet. They's two right along there and there's one right in there and there's three or four worked up to the top. There's a little one there where a guy cut me -- pocket knife. That about covers the scars, I reckon. I told some of them, they wanted to know how I got so many scars when I came out of the Army, and I told them that being a Joines; got me the scars. I told them going through war was just like going to a Sunday-school picnic.
(83; 2:18)
***
FRAIL: . . . go with me. That's a "beetle" [pun on "beagle"] dog. Plott, or something or 'nother.
***
FRAIL: Well, I was borned in the year 19 and 14, the seventh day of August. [Photograph A] When I was about six or seven year old, my daddy'd put me to plowing with a big team of horses, and logging. Hed' take me out of school to log in the wintertime. He'd take contracts a-logging. And I drove the team. [Photograph B] I was the team boy. He was a good hand when I was a-growing up -- all of us kids [Photograph C] was little -- he was a good hand to get around and push us and get a great big crop put out. And then he'd either get hooked up and start making liquor, or he'd stay drunk. And it was left up to me to whip the other kids -- and two or three of them older than I was -- and make them work and work this crop out. We'd work all day and my mother'd work in the field, and cry, you know, with a bunch of kids. And then he'd come in and cuss her and accuse her of talking to other men and beat her up. Till us kids got big enough to fight him. And I'd, I'd . . . After I got up any size he was afraid to try it because he knew I'd take a stick and knock him in the head if he jumped on my mother, you know. I used to hate him. I hated him when I was little. I didn't hate him so bad when he wasn't drunk, but I could see him drunk, and I could tell. I could see him a mile and a half away and I could tell when he was drinking, because he had a way of spreading his fingers just as wide as he could get them and slinging his hands when he was drinking. And he had a . . . You could look at him and you could tell, because he had his fingers spread just as wide as he could. And I could see them, and I'd get so mad I'd just see red almost, when I was a little bitty kid, I mean just a little bitty thing.
(151; 4:11)
***
FRAIL: [To horse] Gee, whoa, whoa. Now you're not looking where you're a-going, honey. Gee, baby. Come on.
***
FRAIL: I . . . I just never was the same type of person as any of my brothers. None of the rest liked to do the things I did. You see, I liked animals, I liked to hunt, I loved to plow, I loved to work animals. I'd break every little old heifer calf I had to work, you know. I'd take them out and log with them. [Photograph E] Make little old yokes and have two of them teamed up, had the milk cows, a-working them. My mother'd quarrel at me, you know, and all such stuff as that. That was my life -- was animals. [Photograph F] And my brothers and sisters, I whipped every one of them a whole lot more than my daddy did, and made them work. I had to stay right after them. I used to whip my brother, and him four year older than I was, and make him hoe corn, you know. He'd get mad and was gonna quit. I'd give him a whipping, make him work. And that was my responsibility to see that every -- at least, I thought it was. Until I got up about thirteen year old and then he run me away from home, you see. I didn't live with my daddy after I was thirteen.
(190; 5:16)
***
FRAIL: My daddy was awful bad when he got drunk -- I mean just plumb, floppy drunk, you know. He could walk -- you never seen him so drunk but what he'd walk -- but he'd just be wild drunk, you know, he'd want to pray for you. He wanted to pray for you. And I wouldn't let him pray for me. I told him that was making a mock of God and I didn't believe in no such junk as that. But he always, when he got drunk and got around me, "Shon, can I pray f or you?" -- called me shon instead of son, you know -- "Shon, can I pray for you?" And one day I come down the mountain below home there and Clyde Canter lived down there at that --where that Minnie Fraser lives. And I come down by and it was getting down almost dark, and wintertime, just as cold as it could be. The ground was froze pretty good and ice froze along the creek bank. Well, down there at the ford . . . We had a ford across where we drove the wagon across and it'd wash out, come a rain and wash it out, and we'd pile rocks across below it and lay plank on it. We'd walk across there sometime. We had a foot log about twelve foot high on down below there and a path went straight over to the house. But he was drunk and I knew he'd fall off that old tall foot log. And, so I just took him out by that ford. Well, they'd piled in there, and there's a hole of water there just about three foot deep and about fourteen or fifteen foot wide, you know, and plank laying across on the rock below. And I said, "You'd better let me hold you up across these rocks here. You'll fall in." "Aw," he says, "you think I'm drunk, don't you?" And he'd asked me could he pray for me, and I told him no. So, he said, "Well, I'll tell you what, you think the Lord ain't with me." He said, "You get on over there out of the way," and he said, "if the Lord's with me, he'll hold me up," and said, "if he ain't with me, he'll let me fall in." Well, I just went on across the creek and got out, I guess, fifty foot from the creek and turned around and watched him. He backed up a time or two and staggered around, made him a sight, you know, at them plank, and he made a running go and he got about halfway across the creek, right in he went plumb out of sight in that water. And he come up, you know, a-blowing and hollering, "Hooo, hooo," and he come out of there, and he was just a-shaking all over, you know. And just about 200 yards on up to his house, where he lived -- I didn't live with him then -- and got nearly to the house, he looked over at me and he said, "I'd a-made her, but," said, "damn you, you shoved me."
***
FRAIL: [Photograph G] I felt a sadness, not so much at losing him -- he went through life and wasted his life. He had plenty of sense -- that a man could go through life and not have no more real tears shed over him than was shed at his funeral. [Photograph H] My mother lived up 'til just a few year ago. I don't believe she ever hated him, just really hated him. I think there was a place there in her that she always liked him in a way.
***
(290; 8:03)
NOISE OF LIVESTOCK MARKET
FRAIL: And then, I believe I did tell about the time Jim and Fleet was catching the calves, you know, and the calf run over Jim and knocked him cold, and you was going to pray for him and you said, "Now I lay me down to sleep."
FLEET BROCK: Frail said, "Here," says, "shoot this rabbit," and he jumped the ditch and Jim shot him. The gun was loaded that time -- shot him in the calf of the leg. You remember that, don't you, Fraley?
FRAIL: {pulling up pants leg to show scar] Yeah, I remember.
***
(339; 9:25)
FRAIL: One woman told me one time, one of these girls, said, "You've got the longest tongue of any man I've ever seen in my life." I says, "It ain't no wonder," and I showed her that scar on my tongue and I said, "They cut the end of my tongue off when I was little and put a piece of woman's tongue on it," and I said, "I ain't never been able to control it." And I said, "There ain't no man can control a woman's tongue." And went to one place one time and an old girl whispered over to some of the rest of them, and I heard her, said, "I don't know who he is, but if I knew him, I bet I could outtalk him." And I said, "Well, I'm not hard to get acquainted with, but I don't believe you could outtalk me." So, we talked to each other about two hours and she was a-holding me a pretty good light, but she had large feet, you know, for a woman her size. I finally looked over at her, and I said, "You'd a been real tall if they hadn't hit so high up on your leg when they started to break your ankle and doubled so much of you down for foot." And that got the best of her, and when I got her to going I never let her stop then the rest of the night. And it wasn't a week 'til that was all over the country up around Traphill and up in there. Everybody I'd see, "Well, boy, if you outtalked that woman I want you to come to our party. I want you to come up when we're going to have a get-together and music or something or other, you know. If you can outtalk that woman -- we've never seen nobody can hold her a light."
(380; 10:33)
[Photograph I]
MUSIC (Charlie Poole and the N.C. Ramblers)
[Photograph J]
***
(392; 10:53)
FRAIL: My grandpa prided hisself on bein' strong, you know, and he had an old mill rock that weighed about six or seven hundred pound. And ever Christmas he'd get him a gallon of brandy, and he'd take him a drink or two of that brandy and he'd go out there and get that mill rock. He'd get it and stick it up over his head like that, you know, and lay it back down. Well, this winter'd been extra cold, been a lot of rain and cold weather and the ground had froze pretty bad, you know. And so Christmas come, he got him a gallon of brandy, and went in and took a few drinks, went out there and got a-hold of his mill rock and he couldn't move it. He goes back in and he sets there a little bit and drinks two or three more drinks, and he tried again and he couldn't move it. Went back and set down and was setting there looking so bad, and my grandmother passed and she said, "Honey, what's the matter with you," said, "you look bad." Said, "Are you sick?" He said, "I'm not sick, but," says, "you know I'm a-getting old and getting old fast." He said, "Last year that rock wasn't even heavy and," he said, "I can't even wiggle it this time." He said, "I'm breaking fast." And said he took about three more drinks of brandy and went out there, and he got down on his knees, and he give a heave or two on that rock and shook it and stuck it up over his head, and he had nine acres of topsoil froze to it.
***
(448; 12:26)
[Photograph K]
FRAIL: You see I used to fox hunt a whole lot when I was little. And I always loved to hear dogs run, and kept dogs all my life, up till I got a hold of the Lord, I kept a bunch of hunting dogs. You go out of a night in these mountains, you would go up here on a hill, you know, and turn our dogs loose. [Photograph L] Well, maybe they'll run a hour over there on that side of the mountain, then they go across the mountain out of our hearing. Well, we'd be a-setting up here, well, there's nothing to do -- there wasn't no dogs to listen at -- except talk.
***
FRAIL: Used to have a coon dog and I always bragged on him about being the best coon dog in the country, you know. And I know one night I was over there on the mountain, and I could tell when he'd went over on the mountain and treed, you know, and if he treed inside of a tree I could just holler, "Come on," and he'd go and strike another coon. He wouldn't stay at the tree, I didn't have to go over to him, you know. He just barked different, he barked faster when he treed on the outside and where you could get the coons, but if it was in a den -- he knew I wouldn't cut a den -- he'd just bark now and then, but he'd still bark "treed," you know. So I went over there one night and there was a big old hollow chest-nut over there on the mountain, and he'd strike a coon and run and tree it in that chestnut. I'd say, "Come on, we can't get him," and he'd take off and the first thing you know he'd have another one a-going, and right back in the same chestnut. And he run all night, I didn't count them, I wasn't too worried about how many he treed. Next morning about daylight I decided to go over by and see the tree, you know -- just curiosity. And I went over there and they's so many coons in that old chestnut that ever time they'd inhale the crack'd open up about four inches and every time they'd exhale the crack'd go back together and it was just a-skreeking, a-making a noise, you know.
***
(485; 13:28)
FRAIL: If somebody told one, I tried to top it ever' time, you know, that was the general theme. If somebody'd tell you one, why, tell him a little bigger one. That one about the mill rock -- first time I heard that, it had a quarter of an acre of topsoil froze to it, you know. They grow, they're sort of like fish tales, you know. There's nothing that'll outgrow a tall tale and a fish tale. That's the reason you've always had to have three sets of scales in the world -- one to weigh produce on, one to weigh a man's fish on, and one to weigh babies on."
***
(502; 13:56)
FRAIL: I'll tell you a true tale -- now I heard it for the truth. And my grandmother used to tell it to me, and it was one of her uncles. She was half Indian. And one of her uncles, they said he was a bear hunter, and his dog treed a bear up on the side of a mountain, and the bear was about to kill all of his dogs. And this old man run in and grabbed the bear by the hind leg and pulled his leg around the tree there on the side of the hill. And he had a pine knot, just an old big pine knot, and beat that bear's brain out with the other hand, held the bear by the hind leg and killed it with a pine knot.
***
[Photograph M]
FRAIL: Back then there wasn't many cars. Kids couldn't get around and meet people, you know. [Photograph N] You growed up with a little settlement and you knew just people right around you. [Photograph O] Anybody off four or five miles was a stranger to you, you know, you met them once in a while. [Photograph P] The rest of it was all work, you see, and then telling tales.
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(535; 14:51)
FRAIL: Mack Lane used to come down to the house, and old Mack was about six foot four, you know. And he was pretty bad to drink, stay drunk about all the time. And ever' time he'd come in and catch a cat a-setting around -- you know, old folks used to have a cat hole in the door, and the cats went in and out anytime they wanted to. And that cat hole was never closed, regardless of how cold it was, them cats could go in and out. Grandpa had give my sister a little tabby kitten. I'd walk by and she'd have that cat a-holding it in that old hat, a-carrying it around, you know, and I was always teasing her. I'd walk by and tickle that cat in the breast, and boy, he'd nail me and put that mouth on me, and if I moved he'd bite me. And I aggravated the little old kitten all the time, and when it got up grown it made the biggest tom cat I ever saw, I believe. It just kept a-growing. Course she was feeding it all the time. She'd slip to the cupboard and she'd give it meat, and she fed it raw meat, and she fed it milk, and every . . . She fed it twenty-five times a day, you know, and it made a cat. Well, all the other cats was afraid of it. But this old cat when he got grown didn't come in the house much -- I guess he had a time getting through the cat hole, it was so big, you know.
One night I let him in, and old Mack was there. And Mack was always catching a cat around the fireplace, and he'd get it by the ears and put it down between his legs 'til it couldn't scratch him, and pull its head back there, and pinch its ears enough 'til it would start squawling. And then he'd saw his fingers across its throat and make its voice tremble, and it sounded sort of like a fiddle, you know, and he'd say he was playing "Bobby Jones." Everytime he seen a cat, "Doggone, let's play "Bobby Jones," and he'd reach down and grab it, and up he'd come with it, you know. And I opened the door one night -- and I'd been a-wanting to see him get a-hold of that old big tom cat. I figured what'd happen, you know. I opened the door one night and that old tom cat come in, and walked up beside of Mack and set down and commenced to licking hisself in front of the fire. And old Mack said, "Let's play "Bobby Jones," and grabbed that cat, you know. And he caught him up there, and the old cat didn't pay much attention to him getting him up there. He got him by the ears, and he pinched pretty hard and made one saw. That cat never squawled, but when Mack rubbed that finger across his throat, he just reached up and nailed him. He just eat all of that muscle out right there, in his palm, you know -- just eat it 'til you could see the bone. Mack a-trying to sling him loose, and he couldn't sling him loose. He had both claws just sunk up in his hand, you know. That cat came loose, he just walked back over and set down. Mack said, "Doggone, I believe I'll go home." I never did -- now I was about, I guess, about ten year old and messed around a whole lot before Mack died -- but I never did see Mack touch another cat as long as I lived. He'd come down there to the house, but . . . and the cat walked in beside of him, he'd never even look at them.
(616; 17:06)
JOYCE NEWMAN: Tell the one about Rufe Fletcher outside the church.
FRAIL: Oh, old Rufe. While we're on the Fletcher business, Rufe was over there at church one time, you know, and he had that high way of hollering out when he got sort of excited and talking, and when he was drinking especially. There was a big oak tree stood out in front of the church, you know, and the boys would gang up around the church and drink on the outside back when I was young, and they'd usually have two or three fights outside if they was having a service inside. We was all setting there in the church and everything got sort of still, old Rufe hollered out, said, "W-r-r-r-ow!" said, "some damn son of a bitch cut me." Everybody in there, you just heard a whisper go over the room, said, "Rufe Fletcher." "Rufe Fletcher."
(648; 18:00)
JIM JENNINGS: Remember that time Rufe walked by his own house one night to get a light. Where did he walk to get one anyway?
FRAIL: He was over here at Com Holder's. Com live right over there past Edmond's and Rufe lived about half way between there and Andrew Jennings's, you know. And Rufe was drunk, and they heard him a-coming a-singing, and Com's wife said, "Blow out the light and get in the bed," said "here comes Rufe and he's drunk." And said, "He'll be aggravating us for two or three hours," said, "let's just go on to bed and don't answer him," said, "make out like you're asleep." Rufe went up and knocked on the door, said, "Hello, Com. Hey, Com," said, "I want to borrow a light." Nobody answered him, you know, and he knocked three or four times, and nobody answered him. He said, "Go to hell, you S.O.B. Go to hell, damn you." Said, "I'll go to Andrew Jennings's and get me a damn light." And he'd a-had to walk right through his yard. He lived about halfway between there and Andrew Jennings's. He said, started off down the road a-singin':
"Going down to Big Chet's bar room,
Where the music goes around and around.
I drink that old corn liquor,
I lay my money down."
***
(684; 19:00)
BLANCHE: This is the first one he sent me, and I didn't like the looks of that at all. He looked so -- he looked so egotistical and looked like he was half drunk and I didn't like the looks of it. I cried because he looked like that. I felt sorry for him.
FRAIL: You didn't tell me that when I come home.
(700; 19:26)
BLANCHE: He'd come home -- or came to my house -- on a Friday and asked me to marry him Friday night after telling me for months he wouldn't ask any girl to marry him while he was in the service because he might go over-seas and get hurt and be a cripple, and he didn't want a woman to live with him because she felt sorry for him. So he kept telling me all those months, you know, just . . . He never would say anything about getting married. So then that night when he came, he asked me if I would marry him, and onto that he said, "Or would your mama let you marry me?" And I said, "Why don't you ask her?" I didn't say yes or no, I just said, "Why don't you ask her?" I didn't tell him that I would whether he asked her or not, so he thought he had to ask Mama, and he spent all day the next day trying to get up nerve enough to ask her for me. [Photograph Q] Finally he did, along down late in the evening, and she said yes.
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(735; 20:25)
BLANCHE: I don't remember anything at all about my father's family, because he and my mother were divorced when I was four years old. When I was about six, then my mother remarried, and at that time, in the community where we lived, divorce was a thing that was not accepted. Most of my not-too-good memories there do consist of the rejection and the parents not allowing their kids to play with us, to the point that they called us names and oftentimes when we'd go to the johnny house or -- I don't know about my brother, I think he got caught there a few times, but I know that I did definitely -- and they would rock . . . throw rocks. And the johnny house had a tin roof, of course, and you'd hear the rocks hitting on the top. And I'd sit there or stand and peep out the door, afraid to go out because I was afraid I'd get hit with a rock. I guess I was pretty much of a coward in those days.
(771; 21:25)
My stepfather and my mother didn't get along very well, because he was something like twenty years younger. They would get into a quarrel, and Mama would decide to commit suicide. And the way she thought she would do it was to go out to the railroad track and walk in front of a train. And so, she used to do that, I mean she used to actually walk to the railroad track. And especially my younger brother and I -- just going along now, tugging to her clothes, trying to pull her and hold her back to keep her from going, and just crying and screaming. Of course, we'd go on out there and the train would pass and my mother would still be there. We'd go back to the house. And as time would go on there'd be another such occasion. But even that passed and . . . I never hear a train whistle that I don't think about it.
***
(804; 22:20)
FRAIL: [Photograph X] So you see, I married her the second time I ever saw her practically, you know. I come home and saw her one time, and come back, why, we got married just as soon as we could get things through and get married. And I was scared, I'll tell the truth about it. It was the only time in my life, except when something scared me when I was right little, that I really was scared, only time after I got up anything like grown.
BLANCHE: I know one other tine.
FRAIL: Well, yeah, I do too, when I shot you. I was just as scared, my knees was a-shaking, and I wanted to run and didn't have sense enough. And I've regretted it ever since. No, I don't reckon I have, but I've often wondered why I didn't.
BLANCHE: You couldn't.
FRAIL: Couldn't? No, you had a-hold of me, didn't you?
BLANCHE: No, it . . . Well, I had a-hold of your hand -- and besides, it was meant to be.
***
(834; 23:10)
[Photograph Y]
FRAIL: I'd never been out of North Carolina. It was all new. All something entirely different, and the biggest thing was, you know, that I had to take orders.
***
FRAIL: One day I was up there and I heard these two colonels from two other thousand-bed hospitals tell our colonel, said, "We're getting a thousand men in. We can handle all of them, or any part of then." And our colonel said, "No, my men'll be glad to handle them." Which wasn't a thing in the world only just wanting a big name on a-handling more patients than the rest of them. He didn't have no mercy on the men that was working, because we was worked to death.
That night it was about 20 below zero, about eight inches of snow on the ground, and they had a line of walking patients a-coming up from the hospital, a-standing outside in the cold. And some of them barefooted and some of them with no coat, just a undershirt on,. And I gave my coat and shirt to one or two of them that was bad, that was naked almost. And they put me in charge of a group of German prisoners they had, and they was wounded and they told me to just hold them till they got the Americans in the hospital. And I stood out there and my teeth chattered all night, and held these German prisoners there. And a lot of them barefooted, just kids. And American boys standing out there. Well, they had one man admitting them into the hospital. And right across the street the colonel and eight or ten officers and a bunch of -- or maybe twenty-five officer -- and a bunch of nurses, over there having them a drunken party. You could hear them just a-giggling and a-laughing and a-dancing in there. And the more I stood and listened, the madder I got, just thinking they could have put two of them out there and let them a-helped get these guys in the hospital. And I'm telling you what's the truth, if I'd a-had a little bunch of dynamite, about four tons, stuck under that thing and a little switch where it was -- made it went off -- that building would have went so high you'd have seen arms and legs a-flying clean back over here. I'd have blowed that whole thing away. And I was so mad, I was just shaking like a leaf. I didn't eat a bite for three or four days and nights. And some of them come around and said one morning, said, If you want to volunteer for the infantry, said, run over to the office right now. Boy, I run over everything getting over there. And I got over there, the whole outfit was lining up.
***
(911; 25:18)
FRAIL: We had this little old second lieuten-ant, you couldn't tell him a thing in the world. Ever' time we'd come to a forks in the road, he'd jerk out his map and holler for the communications corporal and the first sergeant and any other sergeant standing around, and I'd go up with him there, you know. "Now which way this say go here?" and "Which way does this say go?" And if we told him one way, he'd go the other. And we soon found out to tell him the wrong way, and then we'd keep him sort of straightened out, you know. But he'd go right backwards to what we told him ever time. And so I kept telling him, I said, "Lieutenant, you're going to ride up in some town some of these times . . . We was supposed to been a-backing the infantry up, and we was on jeeps, you see, and they was a-walking. And he'd get ahead of them; he'd get a little faster than they could walk, you know, and just drive off and leave them. And I kept telling him, I said, "Lieutenant, you're going into town some of these times, and they're going to wipe us out." "Aw, no, no, this has been cleaned out two or three weeks ago." This was always cleaned out two or three weeks ago. We drove up right in the middle of this town, four jeeps of us and all of us right in the center, just in a wad, and parked right around where there's a square there. They had a well -- most of your towns had a watering trough thing, you know, a pump, where they got water; the whole town'd get water -- we drove right up to that pump, and there was a big oak tree there. Boy, they opened up on us from every window around there with rifles, machine guns. And I jumped out, and there was a big oak tree there, and bark commenced to knocking off, and I went around that oak tree about twice, you know. And one old boy jumped up and just hit on the ground and then crawled under the jeep. And he'd tease me for a long time after then, and he said that when me and him jumped out of the jeep at the same time and said I went around that oak tree four times before he hit the ground, I was moving so fast. Said, "Doc don't need to tell me he can't move," said, "I saw him come around that oak tree four times before I hit the ground."
***
(972; 27:00)
FRAIL: And one day we was driving along a ridge, you know, and you could see these big old cement pillboxes over on this ridge and one over there and one over yonder, you know. And I thought I saw a gray overcoat run around behind one. I said, "Lieutenant, I believe I saw some Germans over yonder at that pillbox." "Aw, you're crazy," said, "B Company cleaned this out a week ago." And we got out there and drove up to some barracks and here come about seventy-five German officers with their hands stuck up in the air, you know, and here commenced coming enlisted men from every direction. . . .
And they was coming from everywhere and that lieutenant was just as white as a sheet. Thirty, about thirty-one of us boys, and that many Germans just coming from every direction with guns, you know a-handing them to us. They thought we had them surrounded. They didn't think anybody was just crazy enough, thirty men, to ride up among all them Germans and them big old fortified pillboxes where you couldn't have knocked out with a artillery piece, you know, and just ride up there in the open like ducks, you know, and ride right up to the barracks and stop. They knowed anybody had better sense than that. And then people talk about how we licked the Germans. Like I said, we got them so confused they quit, we never did lick them. Praise the Lord.
***
(1010; 28:03)
BLANCHE: I could tell by his letters that . . . that the war was in a way changing him, [Photograph Z] and changing his ideas and hurting his faith. Because before he went over he was . . . he seemed, you know, to really have a profound faith and a belief in God. But all the things that he saw there, [Photograph A1] the suffering of . . . especially of children -- that seemed to . . . to really get to him.
***
[Photograph A2]
FRAIL: You can cut a TV off if the film gets too rough, [Photograph A3] but over there on the front lines you don't cut it off. It's right there, and you're in it. [Photograph A4] There ain't no such thing as flipping a little button and walking in the other room and getting you a sandwich and a good drink. [Photograph A5] You are there and there ain't no way of getting out.
***
FRAIL: [Photograph A6] We got over there and when we got in there where the Germans had all these places where they burnt them Jews, I saw carload after carload of men and women, mostly women and old men and little children. They would put about a foot of unslaked lime, and, you know, you take water and put it in unslaked lime and it'll heat and the heat set on fire and burn. And it gets hot. And they'd put these people in there in that lime and just -- as many as they could stand up. And they had what they called forty-by-eights, that was supposed to hold forty men or eight cows, maybe they'd stack a hundred in there, just like sar-dines, just take their gun butts and beat them in there and them with kids in their arms in that lime, and then shut the door, and then they'd go to sweating and the sweat would make that fire go to . . . that lime go to catching on fire, and it'd burn the meat off their bones and them a-screaming and a-dying like that . . .
You know them people had never done nothing to the Germans. And just see them standing in that lime, meat burned off up to their knees and them a-screaming and dying locked up in there, and nobody to let them out nor this, that and the other. And then when you let them out, have somebody half burnt-up grab you around the legs and kiss your shoes. We never went through nothing like that in this country. And if you can go through something like that and come out and not be changed, you're going to have to . . . you're going to be different to what I always was.
***
(1083; 30:05)
BAND PLAYS (John Handley Marching Judges of Winchester, Va.)
[Photograph A7]
[Photograph A8]
[Photograph A9]
FRAIL: After the war, Holly Farms come in here and they commenced to commercializing raising chickens. People commenced moving off of the farms, off of the farms and going to the cities, you know, to get jobs in mills and things because it wasn't as hard a labor and they had more money to spend and it just made altogether a change. All in my lifetime I've seen it just turn right around from one way to go back the other one. I saw it turn from horses to tractors, you know, and I wouldn't be surprised if I don't see it turn back to horses.
***
FRAIL: There's ;not one-half the cleared land in Wilkes County now as there was when I was a boy, and ten times as many people, twenty times as many people living in it. There's twenty times the homes that there was when I was a boy, and just about one-third the cleared land that there was back then. See, people lived off of the land, they didn't have all the public jobs, and now they just got a place big enough for a yard and a house, and then the fields grow up. But I don't know what's the difference in having what you get by raising it on the land or working money out and scrubbing yourself to death in a factory to buy what you have to have. I'd rather . . . I'd rather work outside than inside, so I'd rather raise it as to beat my brains out a-trying to get it out of the factory.
***
(1157; 32:08)
FRAIL: (singing)
Meat in the cupboard and the hide in the churn,
The meat in the cupboard and the hide in the churn,
The meat in the cupboard and the hide in the churn,
If that ain't good stuff, I'll be durned, groundhog.
Yonder comes Sal with a smile and a grin,
Yonder comes Sal with a smile and a grin,
Yonder comes Sal with a smile and a grin, [Photograph A10]
Groundhog gravy all over her chin, groundhog.
***
FRAIL: Father, we thank you for another wonderful day, thank you for every blessing, thank you for this food. Bless it, that we might eat it to nourish our body, we might use our strength to glorify thee, for we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Praise the Lord.
[to granddaughter] What do you want girl, hmmm? You want something to eat?
***
(1183; 32:51)
BLANCHE: I remember one time when Carol was, oh, a few months old, there was a real bad electric storm and we were just sitting down to eat, and the lightning ran in and bursted the bulb over the table and after that she was real scared of storms. And one evening a cloud came up and it began to thundering and lightning and she began to be frightened, you know, and he came in from the orchard where he was working and took her in his arms and walked out up in the orchard as the storm came up. After that she was not afraid of them.
***
(1201; 33:21)
FRAIL: Headacher, eye winker; tommy tinker, nose dropper, mouth eater, chin chopper, goozle popper. You like that? Play it again. Headacher, nose dropper, mouth eater, chin chopper, goozle popper. You going to play it on Grandpa? You going to play it on Grandpa?
BLANCHE: Come here. Headacher . . . Go ahead.
FRAIL: It's all over, now Grandma, she's done had that two or three times, that's enough.
***
(1224; 34:00)
BROWN OSBORNE: Doing fine. That little pine's got to go there. Doing fine. Move it out of the way.
FRAIL: Delayed fall.
BROWN: I caught that one. Up the hill about three . . . Good, right there. Okay, give me a stake.
***
(1270; 35:16)
FRAIL: I'd rather get out here and dig ditches as to work on a truck, any kind of work outside, any kind, it don't make no difference, hacking lumber, saw milling, or cutting timber . . . Why, if I hadn't a-had pressure on me, a man couldn't have forced me into no garage a-working in grease and oil and stuff, because I've always despised to smell gas and motor oil and stuff like that. That's one job that I used to swear that I wouldn't have. Nobody couldn't give it to me. And then took it and worked at it fourteen years. I always loved to farm. I just never did get financially able to even start thinking about a farm. Land commenced to jumping in price, jumping in price, and I found this place right here. Now when Blanche went into the flower shop business, if she hadn't a-got sick, why I'd have probably turned loose and went into it, but I was working until she got the business, and she got the business up to where it was making pretty good when she come down sick and had to quit, you see. She just had to quit and sell out. And that stopped that. And I don't know, just . . . just one thing right after another one. Well, even a-working over yonder on the . . . in the garage, I run a truck over a bank and broke my back.
***
(1314; 36:30)
FRAIL: In 1965 my wife was running a flower shop and she kept having dizzy spells and she went to a family doctor regular, and she went to him and he examined her and he said, "I can't believe what I've found. I want you to run more checks and get other people's . . . another doctor's ideas about this." So he run cardiograms and things on her and he told her, "You've got just a little bit of fiber for a heart." And she had emphysema, and her body gathered fluid, she had to take fluid pills all the time. And she . . . .He told her she had complete cardiac failure, and he put her on ten hours of bed rest at night and three hours the middle of the day. He said, "I don't mean lay down on a couch or something or nother and watch TV, I mean go to bed." . . .
Well, my children was all in college, and she wouldn't let them know how bad she was. Course they knew, but she didn't want me to say nothing to them, afraid they'd quit school and she wanted them all to have a college education. And this doctor had told her . . . She told him she couldn't 'til she got her kids through college and he said, "You'd better do some praying."
***
(1354; 37:36)
BLANCHE: Well, he didn't say too much about what he was feeling, but it was . . . it was visible, I mean, he . . . His health seemed to go down, and, of course, he did have some problems, he had hemorrhoids. And then later high blood pressure. And I'm sure that he was real discouraged although he didn't . . . he didn't say too much about it, but you could tell it was there. And it seemed that he began to age a lot faster than . . . than he should have. And so we just . . . There's just no way to describe how you go from day to day in something like that, except just to say that you . . . you just accept it and you live with it and make the best of it.
***
(1382; 38:23)
FRAIL: I'd quit going to churches because I didn't see nothing in them. I told my wife, I said, "If you go to church and you hear a man preach and you come out mad, you're better off to stay at home than you are to go to church." I said, "There's none of them that believes in God," I said, "they preach it, but they don't believe it." And I don't know, I always believed there was a God, but I'd been taught that he was far off, he'd died 2,000 years ago, and he'd come back some day and blow a trumpet and pick me up and take me to Heaven, maybe, if I was good enough to pass the test. And that was as far as my God went.
***
BLANCHE: And then one weekend all the children were home from school, and Carol ran everybody out of bed that morning and told them they were going to church with Mama, and so we all went to church. And this morning when I walked into the sanctuary, there was a joy like nothing I'd ever felt in my whole life, and it just seemed to envelop me. And it was such a joy that I couldn't keep the tears from flowing, just a singing, beautiful joy like nothing I'd ever felt.
****
FRAIL: We got over there and this little preacher got up and he said, "Lord promised me a miracle," Said, "who believes in miracles?" And two or three of us raised our hands and I guess there was about eighty or ninety in the church. And two or three of us raised our hands. So he got up and preached, and I didn't . . . couldn't tell you today one word he preached. But I thought when he was preaching, now he's preaching to my brother and he's going to get him to go up and re-dedicate his life. And when he stood up and give the altar call, here went my brother. He walked right up beside of me. But before my brother started up there, there was some-thing inside of me went around and said, "Whish, whish, whish, whish, whish." And it kept getting faster, and every time it went around it was hot. It felt like a coal of fire about the size of your hand a-going around inside of me. And when we was kids we used to go to molasses makings and we'd take a rag and soak it in kerosene oil -- everybody had kerosene lanterns -- and we'd soak this rag in kerosene oil and tie it on the end of a stick and light it and sling it around and around, you know, and we'd say -- it'd make a whishing sound. We'd say we was making a ribbon of fire, and you could sling it fast enough till it'd look like a ribbon of fire, you know. And that's what I thought of.
But it was, I got to boiling. And there was an old school teacher that taught me and all three of my children a-standing in front of me. And I was a-gripping the back of the pew, and I thought if I opened my mouth, the steam would boil out, and it'd scald her to death. And I was gritting my teeth, and I thought the steam was a-coming out of my eyes, my ears, and my nose. And when my brother and his wife walked by, they looked like they was about eighteen inches high and I was looking at them through a big fog. And I couldn't understand why my wife wasn't concerned because I was a-boiling. And all at once I knew she was going, and I thinks, What's she going for? She's ready to die, and the doctor told her she couldn't live another month hardly. She come home and said he wasn't expecting to see her again because he just told her to come back in four weeks and . . . I mean six weeks instead of four . . . and he wouldn't give her a month to live, and she said, "He's not expecting to see me no more." I thinks, What's she going to the altar for? And when she got about halfway up there, the thought hit me, you touch that preacher or you're going to melt and run across the floor like butter. And I said, Lord, there ain't no way, I can't get up there. I don't have the strength to get there. And the next thing I knew I was there, with my wife. And the preacher put one hand on my shoulder and one hand on her shoulder, and we knelt down And just about the tine my knees hit the floor, all this heat left me. I just got up and walked back to my seat. I didn't go up there for nothing except to keep from melting.
***
(1502; 41:43)
BLANCHE: As we knelt, I felt just something happened, seemed like in the back of my head, in the base of my skull, and it was like -- I thought -- like an electric shock. Because Ií' been shocked pretty bad one time before, and I knew, you know, the similarity. It was sort of the same feeling. And that just seemed to spread through my body, and of course the thought that flashed through my mind was that I was having a heart attack. But I was so happy, it didn't make any difference, you know.
***
(1520; 42:13)
FRAIL: And when I got back to my seat, my wife came back. And my oldest daughter grabbed her and started crying. And that was unusual, for her to cry in front of anybody. And so we got about halfway home, I wouldn't talk, and I was studying about this heat. I wasn't interested in nothing else going on around me. I'd felt something -- God had come alive, and I knew He had power over me, to make me go up in a little puff of smoke, or just do away with me. Instead of being a God that died 2,000 years ago, He was here now and He had power over me. And I knew it. And we started home, and got about halfway home. Carol looked over at her mother, and she said, "You think the Lord healed your heart, don't you?" She said, "I know he did."
And she come home and she tied seven different kinds of medicine up in a plastic bag and set it in the middle of the table, and says, "I am healed." Well, He didn't heal the emphysema now, He healed her heart. And the following Wednesday, one week or ten days later, we went over there to prayer meeting -- the preacher wasn't there. And she still couldn't lay down. She'd set up and propped up on seven or eight pillows all these years, you know, and she couldn't lay flat in the bed. And so we went over there to this prayer meeting, and they asked me to dismiss the service, and when I was a-praying, just as soon as I got through, she said, "Let's go," and we took out. And I said, "What's the matter, didn't you like my prayer?" And she said, "I've got to get home, honey," said, "I'm so sick I feel like I'm going to die." Well, I knew she hadn't took no medicine in ten days and the doctor had told her not to do without that medicine at all, to have it at all times. And I felt of her pulse and her heart was good and strong, and she said, "It's not my heart," said "I'm sick." And I brought her home, and she vomited up nearly the commode full of old blue -- old pus like comes out of a boil or a sore, you know, that's infected. And she just almost filled the commode. And it stunk like a dead horse. And I finally got her to the bedroom, and in a little bit I went back in there and checked her. And I was in the living room a-praying, and I felt the presence of the Lord in that room. The spirit of the Lord just almost picked me off the couch. I was laying on the couch. And in a little bit she called me and said, "Come in here." And I walked in there, and she said, "Take these pillows out from under my head and let me lay flat on the bed, just leave one." She had seven stacked up, and was a-setting up against them. I took them out and laid her down flat. She had two foam pads she'd put under her legs they had swelled so bad, and she'd been a-sleeping in a -- just like in a hammock, with her feet on them two thick foam pads and on these pillows for six and a half years. She said, "Take them out and lay my legs flat on the bed." And I did, and she laid there a minute or two, and I says, "You all right?" And she said, "I feel great."
***
(1605; 44:35)
BLANCHE: And we spent the summer crying and praying and seeking God and going to services and sharing what had happened in our lives. And, of course, there were a few who received it, and there were many who didn't. But it didn't change the fact that it was real and it still is. Many tines Frail, especially when he'd have the visions that he's talked about, he would cry and look at me and say, "Honey, am I losing my mind?" And, "Why is all this happening to me?" He'd say, "Why hasn't it happened to some of those people who've been church members all their life and who have been good people?" He just never could seem to quite understand why God chose to move and work in him this way. But to me it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. But if I hadn't really known surely that it was God, I would have been afraid.
***
(1650; 45:50)
FRAIL: One night after the Lord healed Blanche, we was out here at the house, setting in a chair out there, and a whole bunch of them -- we was praying for one another. And somebody'd set in the chair and say, "I'm so-and-so," somebody they knew that was sick, you know, and have us pray for them. They was setting by proxy, as they called it, and we was praying for them. Some of them come over and just put their hands on me and said, "Let's pray for Frail." Said, "What do you want us to pray for?" And I said, "That I'll get closer to the Lord." And next thing I knew, I was up somewhere up in the air looking down at them, and all of them . . . I could see me a-setting there and all of them with their hands around on it. And it didn't seem too strange to me, you know. I didn't think too strange about it. But I don't remember coming out of my body, and I don't remember going back in it, but the next thing you know, I was there in my body.
Well, a little while after then, I went out on the hill out there, and I got down and started praying one morning. I just woke up and I was so full of the Spirit I couldn't tell when I had anything in my hand. When I went to eat breakfast, I couldn't tell when I had the fork in my hand or anything. And I told Blanche, I said, "Call my boss and tell him I won't be in this morning." I said, "I couldn't do nothing if I was to go over there, and I don't know whether I could drive over there or not." Well, I went out there on the hill and got down under a poplar tree and started praying. And all at once, I just come out of my body, and I come out of the back of my head then. And I felt like I went up in the air till I looked like I was a . . . one of these . . . You ever seen these old, what they used to call kewpie dolls dressed in overalls? But, I was up in the air and I saw myself there with coveralls on, down under this tree, down on my knees. But now the thought hit me, "Now, what will Blanche say when she comes out here and finds me and I'm not there?" I thought she'd find my body, but I wouldn't be there. And I felt like that I was just held up there in the air, and I come down like I was going back and then I'd go up higher. And I'd come down like I was coming back and then I'd go up higher. And I just got on up till I couldn't see my body. And then I slowly come back down and went in the back of my neck.
***
(1716; 47:40)
HAROLD PIERCE: Paul says, let's lay aside the principles of the doctrines of Christ, let's go on into perfection, glory to God. And this is the hour that the nature of Jesus is being implanted in his brothers. Because that's the only way that we can have the truth of God, is to eat his flesh, and drink his blood. If you don't do it, you're not going to have any life in you. Glory to God. And the Bible said when they came out of Egypt, there was not a feeble one among them, glory to God. And I want you to know that as we eat his flesh and drink his blood, there'll not be a feeble one among us. There won't be any more prayer lines anymore. Glory to God. If you know God for yourself, you don't have to have another man to pray for you.
JOHN TAYLOR: Hallelujah, he's not a far-off God, He's a very present God. He's closer than even our brother that sets beside us, because he's in us. Hallelujah!
***
(1573; 43:41)
FRAIL: I'd stop preachers right in the middle of their sermons, go into strange churches. The Lord'd say, "Go," and when I got there, right in the middle of the sermon, he'd say, "Get up and stop the preacher and testify." And I'd get up and stop him. People'd say, "You'll get throwed out on your head." My wife used to tell me, "You're going to get throwed out on your head." I said, "Me and the Lord's a majority in any crowd. I'm not afraid." And I wasn't, because I was obeying the Lord.
***
(1768; 49:06)
RAY TOWNSELL: Praise God forever more. Praise the Lord. Come on.
FRAIL: Brother Pierce said there was a time of trouble ahead. Not for God's people, there's not time of trouble for God's people except one thing. And that is fear of the unknown. We've got to enter into a spiritual realm that this flesh has never walked in before. That's the reason he said, "Them will become Sons of God that's led by the Spirit." Because we'll go anywhere if we're a-following that Spirit it wants to take us. And if we're following man or flesh we're going to back down when we get to going into this spiritual realm. God has showed me that everything that we've been preached has just been stepping stones to get to where we can enter into this spiritual realm. All this stuff that we've been preached will be so obsolete in a year from now, we won't even listen at it no more. We'll think, "How foolish I was a year ago." Because we're going to go somewhere that Peter started when he started walking on that water and his faith failed him.
(1796; 49:53)
CONGREGATIONAL SONG: Now let us praise him . . .
***
FRAIL: Jesus, when he met the woman at the well, he didn't condemn her and tell her she couldn't enter the kingdom of Heaven, she was living in sin, or anything of the kind. But she had enough faith that he was God until she was filled with the Spirit. God is trying to show us that He's not so interested in what this flesh does, he's a-wanting to get that Spirit back centered to Him, you see. That was the part he breathed into man to make him a living soul. As far as God's concerned, the rest of man is just the same as me a-going out here and plowing dirt. I use dirt to grow my stuff, but what does the dirt mean to me? The corn I'm a-growing is what I'm after, and that's the way God is by man. It's what the mind is centered on, the heart's centered on, what the soul's after. That's what He's perfecting.
***
(1826; 50:43)
BLANCHE: This came to me one morning as I was waking up. As I was waking up, it seemed like that just all kind of shapes and forms were kind of spinning around in my mind, and as I came fully awake they just formed a pattern, and it was this. And it just stayed on my mind, and I got up and got breakfast and started -- after breakfast -- started doing the dishes, and I kept . . . I just couldn't get the picture out of my mind. So I got a pencil and some graph paper, and sat down and drew the pattern. And as I was drawing it, I realized that it was, to me anyway, it seemed to be a quilt pattern. And the words, "the woman at the well," just kept going through my mind. So I thought, well, that must be . . . It's a quilt pattern and that's the name it's supposed to have.
[starts mid-sentence]. . that as Christ, the center, the well of living water. And some have explained it different ways with the colors and the numbers being symbols of different ways with the colors and the numbers being symbols of different things. But I really, as far as a revelation for me on the meaning of it, I don't have. To me it's still just the square and -- a quilt square -- and that's the name. It came from somewhere, and I like to think it was from the Holy Spirit.
***
(1877; 52:08)
FRAIL: Must I tell this? I told it on you a few times. I told that the night she got married she had two dollars. I mean that night after we got married, she had two dollars, and she went and wanted her mama to keep it for her. And her Mama says, "Why don't you keep it?" She says, "You think I'm going to sleep with a strange man with two dollars in my pocket? He might get it."
BLANCHE: I didn't even have two dollars. I spent it all.
FRAIL: Well, I didn't say you did. I said I told it on you. There's one thing about it, she couldn't have married me for my money, because I didn't have none left when we got through getting married. I was making all of twenty-one dollars a month.
BLANCHE: You had seven dollars after we got married.
FRAIL: Did I?
BLANCHE: That's what you told me. You had seven dollars. And then we bought a bus ticket for the two of us up here to visit your rela-tives. And we walked everywhere we went up here. Walked from Moravian, and we rode a . . . Oh, it was so hot that day. And we walked from Moravian . . . rode a bus from town out to Moravian and walked from there to Brocktown. And I can still hear that water in Cub Creek down there, that runs alongside the road -- it wasn't paved then, it was a dirt road. And there I was with my good shoes, and I didn't know I was going to have to walk that far. And we was walking up there, and that water was running down there, and it sounded so cool, and so good, I wanted to go down there and wade in it. But we kept walking. We just had to keep on walking.
FRAIL: We walked about two mile and a half. And I was used to ten or fifteen mile hikes. That didn't seem like nowhere to me.
BLANCHE: Yes, but I wasn't. All I was used to doing was hiking back and forth to the cornfield.
FRAIL: You just made out to me like you was just able to do anything anybody else was.
BLANCHE: I was. I did it, didn't I?
FRAIL: I know, but you've grumbled about it ever since.
BLANCHE: No, I was just talking about it. The thing that I remember so is the sound of that water and how cool it sounded. The day was so hot, and that water sounded so cool and good. Oh, I was happy. I didn't mind the walk. I'd a-walked if I'd a- . . .
FRAIL: Well, I'd a-carried you if you'd just said you was tired.
BLANCHE: Well, why didn't I know that?
(1952; 54:13)
CREDITS
Funding provided by grants to the North Carolina Arts Council and Institute for Southern Studies from
The National Endowment for the Arts
The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation
The Hillsdale Fund
The John Wesley and Anna Hodgin Hanes Foundation
Funding assistance by Philip Hanes.
Directed and Edited by Tom Davenport, with Daniel Patterson, Allen Tullos, and Joyce Joines Newman.
Photographed by Tom Davenport.
Sound recording by Allen Tullos.
Associate Producer, Mimi Davenport.
Editorial Assistance from Laurel Horton, James Peacock, Carol Joines Sivalia, and Charles T. Zug, III.
Technical Assistance from Laurel Horton, Jim Wise, Jerry Joines, John Newman, Roger Manley, Doug DeNatale, Bob Murray, Alan Baragona, Debbie Riggsbee, Bambi Grimes, and Paddy Bowman.
Photographs from the Joines family album, The University of North Carolina Libraries, Bayard Wooten, The Library of Congress, The Jay Anderson Collection, The North Carolina Department of Archives, The Wilkes County Chamber of Commerce, Barry Pose and Dave Freeman, and North Carolina State University.
Music from Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, John Handly Marching Judges of Winchester, Virginia.
Special thanks to Frail and Blanche James, Jim Jennings, Fleet Brock, Brown Osborne, The congregation of the Faith in Jesus Tabernacle.Sound Recordings
Field tapes are cited as "FT" followed by an accession number. All tapes (together with out-takes from the film footage) are in the folklore archives of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Photographs
Listed in the order of their appearance in the film and keyed to the alphabetical symbols in the transcription of the sound track.
A - Photograph of a log cabin at the foot of a tree-covered hillside [Western North Carolina, ca. 1915], William Barnhill Collection, Library of Congress.
Aa - Photograph of John E. "Frail" Joines at the age of six or seven, from the Joines family collection.
B - Photograph of men and a team of oxen pulling logs [Logging in Burke County, N. C.], from a copy in the North Carolina Collection, UNC Library, Chapel Hill.
C - Photograph of man plowing with two mules on a hillside [Farming in Burke County, N. C.], from a copy in the North Carolina Collection, UNC Library, Chapel Hill.
D - Photograph of men and a whiskey still [Moonshine Still], Courtesy of Woolten-Moulton Photographers, Chapel Hill.
E - Photograph of children hoeing on a hillside, Source?
Ea - Photograph of children in a wagon hitched to a cow, little boy holding the lines [Children at Play near Mt. Pisgah, N. C., ca. 1915], William Barnhill Collection, Library of Congress.
F - Photograph of a small child clutching a hen [Children had few toys, The Warren's, Eastern Mt. Pisgah, N. C. ca. 1915], William Barnhill Collection, Library of Congress.
G - Photograph of Frail Joines's father, John Wesley James, from the family album.
H - Photograph of Frail Joines's mother, Gertrude Brock Joines, from the family album.
I - Photograph of three seated men playing a guitar, banjo and fiddle in front of a circle of people [Frank Blevins and the Tar Heel Rattlers], Courtesy of Barry Pass and Dave Freeman.
Ja - Closeup from Photograph J of a man in overalls playing a fiddle in front of a car.
Jb - Closeup from Photograph J of man playing a guitar.
Jc - Closeup from Photograph J of two men, one playing a banjo and the other a guitar.
J - Photograph of four men standing in front of an automobile playing guitar, fiddle, banjo and guitar. [Shortbuckle Roark and unknown musicians, Kentucky, ca. 1925], courtesy of Barry Foss and Dave Freeman.
K - Photograph of four men with hunting dogs, two are in overalls, two have on ????? hats and one a jacket and fedora [Hunters and Dogs], courtesy of Wootten-Moulton Photographers, Chapel Hill.
L - Photograph of men sitting on ground around a large campfire, with hunting dogs [Hunters around Campfire, two photographs], courtesy of Wootten- Moulton Photographers, Chapel Hill.
La - Closeup of Photograph L, one man in the circle with dogs.
Lb - Men gazing into campfire.
M - Photograph of young boy riding a mule [Boy on a Mule], courtesy of the North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh.
N - Photograph of a group of people sitting in front of a log, cabin, stacks of corn stalks in the foreground ["Corn Shucking at Jim Franklin's - Oct. 27, 1910"], North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh.
0 - Photograph of man staning in a wagon hitched to an ox, young man standing beside it [Ox and Wagon], Courtesy of Wootten-Moulton Photographers, Chapel Hill.
P - Photograph of men and haystack [Haying in Burke County, N. C.], from a copy in the North Carolina Collection, UNC Library, Chapel Hill.
Q - Closeup of Photograph Qa.
R - Photograph of Blanche Clanton (Joines) at the age of 4, with bowl haircut by mother, a school photograph from the family album.
Qa - Photograph of children picking cotton in a field [Cotton Sharecropping family, Statesville, N. C., 1939], Marion Wolcott Collection, Yarn Security Administration, Library of Congress.
S - Photograph of a row of mill houses [Mill Village], Courtesy of Atlanta Historical Society.
T - Photograph of Blanche Joines's mother, Carrie Destamona Gentle, and her second husband, Tom Smith, and their daughter, Blanche's half-sister, Alilee Smith Dreibelbis.
U - Photograph of Carrie Smith in a rocking chair, from the family album.
V - Photograph of Blanche Clanton [Joines] with her youngest brother John; she is wearing argyle socks knit by her mother, from the family album.
W - Photograph of Carrie Smith standing in a doorway, from the family album.
X - Frail and Blanche James the day before their wedding on August 9, 1943, from the family album.
Y - Series of photographs of Frail Joines in the Army, from the family album:
a - Photograph of Frail Joines and another soldier pretending to box; Joines is shirtless and the other man is wearing a singlet; made in Colorado Springs during basic training.
b - Photograph of Frail Joines in uniform standing on top of Pike's Peak, Colorado.
c - Photograph of Frail Joines in uniform with a backpack, made in Colorado Springs.
Z - Studio photograph of Frail Joines in uniform made in Austria after the war ended, from the Joines family album.
Al - Photograph of Frail Joines sitting on steps with a small Austrian girl, from the Joines family album.
A2 - A5 Military photographs of World War II, from the National Archives, Washington, D. C.
A2 - Photograph of tank and soldiers during battle.
A3 - Photograph of soldiers and tanks in a road.
A4 - Photograph of three soldiers with machine guns in town streets.
A5 - Photograph of crowd of soldiers and concentration camp survivors in striped suits.
A6 - Series of photographs of parades in North Wilkesboro, courtesy of J. Jay Anderson and Blanche C. Joines.
a - Photograph of Liberty Theatre float showing soldiers raising an American flag.
b - Photograph of automobile in parade on Main Street, North Wilkesboro.
c - Photograph of Coca-Cola float.
d - Photograph of majorettes and band.
e - Photograph of float with sign, "Prevent Forest Fires: Help Us Keep Wilkes County Green"
f - Photograph of Chamber of Commerce float.
g - Girls in an open automobile as Wilkesboro Beauty School float.
h - Furniture float.
i - Float depicting a train.
A7 - Aerial photograph of Wilkesboro/North Wilkesboro, courtesy of J. Jay Anderson.
A7a - Photograph of dressed chickens in front of a sign for Holly Farms Poultry, Courtesy of
A8 - Footage from silent film shot in Wilkesboro ca. 1950, courtesy of the Wilkes County Chamber of Commerce.
A9 - Photograph of Frail and Blanche Joines with a nephew.
A10 - Photograph of Frail Joines in overalls with daughters Joyce and Carol, made at the ABC Orchards in the Brushy Mountains ca. 1951.
A11 - Photograph of Frail Joines holding son Jerry with daughters standing beside him, made at Fairplains, Wilkes County, NC, ca. 1952.
A12 - Photograph of Carol, Joyce and Jerry Joines, made during a family camping vacation on the Blue Ridge Parkway, ca. 1962.
A13 - Photograph of the Joines family seated on a sofa, made at Pores Knob ca. 1964.
