Blow the Tannery Whistle Transcript
- Sylva's like a lot of other little towns in this area. Doesn't make any difference, whether you're talking about, Waynesville or Canton, Franklin or Andrews or Murphy. Most of these towns grew up about 1900, 1910. They usually grew up around some business. Somebody would come in and try to start a business or an industry of some kind, regardless of how simple. It's amazing how many towns right here in this area grew up around a sawmill. That's all it took to start a town: crossroads, depot. Well, in Sylva, it was a tannery. The story goes that there were two guys came down from New York. People saw 'em all over the place, up and down these coves and hollers, they were writing in little notebooks. They were looking for a place to put a tannery, and they felt that the best place for a tannery should have lots of hides. And of course there were farms for a 50 mile radius around here, and they needed tannic acid to tan the hides. And of course here was all this timber as far as you could see. So they picked Sylva. They thought it would be a modest little business. They'd process a fair number of hides, but what actually happened was that, truckloads of hides arrived, far more than they anticipated. And a couple of 100 people showed up looking for work. Well, the guys that had started the tannery sort of panicked. They didn't know what to do. And so they called New York, and they said, what do we do? And described the situation down here in Jackson County. And the guys in New York says, well it's perfectly obvious what you do, you build a larger tannery, put two stories on it, and operate it 24 hours a day instead of eight hours a day. And put a whistle on the top of that tannery. Well, that's the story, anyway. I did grow up hearing that whistle. It was a mournful old sound. It blew at seven o'clock in the morning. Getting these little hills and coves and hollers and it would echo, you know, woo woo, woo. But at 12 o'clock, everybody'd go to what mountain people call the noon meal, you know, dinner. Blew again at five o'clock in the afternoon, to let everybody go home.
Well, what happened very gradually over a period of time, I'd say about three years is, everybody started living by that whistle. When it blew at seven o'clock in the morning, you got up whether you worked in the tannery or not. And when it blew at 12 o'clock you ate dinner, and when it blew at five, whatever you were doing, you quit and went home. My grandmother'd be out in the garden hoeing. That whistle would blow . She'd drop her hoe, go to the house and put dinner on the table for my granddaddy. My granddaddy worked for the Standard Oil company, Esso. Drove one of those big old red and white trucks with all kinds of dangling hoses and compartments. And he would be somewhere in some little grocery store pumping kerosene and he'd hear that whistle blow. It may be 15, 20 miles away. He'd get in the truck and go home to eat dinner.
If you were downtown in Sylva, during the 40s, Victory Garden days, and hear the whistle blow. You'd see all the merchants come out of their stores. They'd lock their doors, and they'd walk home to eat dinner. Aw, they might be gone an hour, an hour and a half. Take their time coming back, window shop, talk to their friends. It's a type of leisure that's gone forever, I guess.
Story goes that one morning the football coach, the high school principal and the mayor of the town were drinking coffee in the one of the little cafes downtown before they went to work, and they got to talking about the whistle. What a beautiful tone it had. It sounded like an organ, you know. Well they sort of got excited about it. They thought that the whistle was sort of a vital part of the community and they got in their car and they went up to the tannery. They decided they'd talk to the manager about making it even more prominent. And they called him out and of course the little guy was bewildered, he didn't know what they were talking about. He says, "I don't know what you mean." And uh, "Well look, "the mayor of the town says, "Well we were thinking, that the whistle could play "a more prominent part in the community. "We thought when there was a holiday, "well, you could blow the whistle. "Well, you could blow it on the 4th of July, couldn't you? "You could blow it on or off all day. "And you could blow it New Year's, you know, "just as the clock went 12 o'clock, you could blow it." And the football coach said, "Well I was thinking, I know it ain't happened yet, "but I was thinking if I won a football game, "you could blow it then, you know."
Well, the manager of the tannery went in the office and called New York. He come back in a few minutes and he says, "I'm sorry gentlemen, I talked to the owners in New York "and they said, we can't do that. "We can't use the whistle for frivolous things. "People won't know whether to come to work or stay home. "And I'm just real sorry. "No, can't do it." So they were disappointed. They were filing out the office store, and he said, "However, they told me in New York to tell you one thing. "They said to tell you that if anything remarkable "ever happens, something earth shaking, "that I can blow the whistle. "Something world famous." Well, they had to be satisfied with that and so they went on.
But in the next 35 years, to everybody's knowledge, they only blew that whistle three times when they wouldn't normally have blown it. You can guess two of them. They blew it December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor. They blew it in '45 when the war was over V J day. But now they did blow it one other time that you may have forgotten about. They blew it October, 18, 1940. That's when the end of the world came. You see what happened is, on October 18th, 1940, there was a Northern lights display that was so spectacular that it frightened a lot of people all over the Southeastern United States. And it was especially effective in Appalachia. My Uncle Albert, he lived through this ordeal and he said that, at the time, he was working at the tannery. His idea of a big time was to get ready at eight o'clock and go down and stand in front of Velts Cafe down there. Stand there for four hours with a toothpick in his mouth. And when 12 o'clock rolled around, he'd go to work.
Well on this particular night, he had company. It was a good crowd standing down there in front of Velts. He said, essentially what was happening was that everybody was staring at the sky. And you can only stand there for so long with a crick in your neck and your mouth open, and you start seeing things that ain't there. He said that there was a fellow by him started crying. He couldn't figure out what was wrong with him. He said, he finally said, "What's wrong with you Roy?" He said, "Roy," he said, "Look, Albert look. "That's a sand clock." That's what mountain people call an hour glass. He says, "Look at that, the sun is running out. "The end of time is here." Feller took off and run, thought the end of the world had come. Well, Albert decided he wanted a second opinion. He stood there 'til twelve o'clock and he went on up to the tannery. Well, when he got there, nobody was working. They were all standing out on the dock, looking at the sky and he went out and stood with them. People still seeing things. He said there was a guy, now that was seeing letters of the alphabet. He says, "Look, hey Albert, look right there. "Don't that look like a 'w' to you? "Big 'w. "I think that's going to be a 'A' right next to it, "what do you think? "It could be spelling "war" in the sky, don't you think?" Well, the manager of the plant came out and he looked at them, looked at the sky, and he went back in and called New York. In a minute he came out and he said, uh "Gentlemen, "if I could have your attention a minute, "I need to tell you something, I have talked to the owners "up in New York. "They're aware of the situation down here "and what they told me is there's a possibility, "just a possibility that the end of time is here. "And so they told me to go ahead and let you go home "so you can be with your loved ones at this hour "and for me to blow the whistle."
Well Albert said he went back in and blew the whistle. He said they all jumped off the dock right in the middle of Scott's creek and I ran down the middle of the creek. He said the water was red and they were running. He was looking at the other people. Their shirts was red, their faces was red. All of 'em running, that whistle blowing--whooo. He said, he thought any minute he's gonna hear Gabriel's horn play a duet with that whistle. Hit the bank, tore all the kudzu off of it, run all the way home with kudzu, hanging around his legs, fell on the porch and laid there. And hassled for breath. Nothing happened. I think Albert was disappointed. We were culturally enriched with that experience. We had a new phrase added to our vocabulary. Didn't make any sense if you were from another county, Haywood, Buncombe and other states. You had to be from Jackson County, or you had to know what I've just told you. It got to the point where, if you came up to somebody from Jackson County, say down on the street in Sylva, and you told them something so amazing, so shocking, so astonishing, it'd almost give 'em heart failure, They would, in all likelihood say, "Well blow the tannery whistle!"
I mean, they won't just blow it for anything, but if you go up there and tell that little feller, what you've just told me, they'll go in there and blow that whistle. That was my granddaddy's favorite expression, I think. He liked to say that. I had a worthless uncle. He was on my mother's side of the family, of course. You know that's how it is when your father's father raises you. If you've got bad blood, it's all more than likely from your mother's side of the family. My worthless uncle would come walking down this road here. My granny would be sitting out here in this rocking chair, rocking. She was bad to judge the world. She sat out here and watched it go by, and she passed judgment on it as he went down the road, and she was particularly hard on my worthless uncle.
She had seen him coming down the road and she'd say, "Aw, here comes that worthless Teester. "He's worthless. "You know, his granddaddy was worthless. "His daddy was worthless. "They ought to sterilize the whole crowd." Oh, embarrassed. Well he did get in trouble, but it wasn't bad trouble. You know, it wasn't go-to-prison trouble. It was, oh, a car wreck, or a fist fight, or sometimes an angry husband looking for him. But what you did back then, if you got in that kind of trouble, you know, people was mad at you. You went off somewhere until they forgot it. My granny said, "Aw, he's probably on the chain gang. "Probably got him trying to rob a liquor store in Atlanta." Eventually, we forgot about him.
One Saturday, we were all downtown in Sylva. Oh, I loved to go to town. Back in the 40s, it's like a carnival. I used to come down with my grandparents. He would usually park--my granddaddy had an old pickup truck, he'd park up about the Sylva supply. He would walk down and stand in front of the Farmers Federation with a whole bunch of guys. They'd spit tobacco, and scratch, and talk about pigs. My granny would get out and go up the street to where the old Belks was, stand around in front of Belks with a lot of ladies about her age, and they'd compare ailments. My granny could actually get jealous of somebody that was sicker than she was. Sometimes she would come back and get in the truck. She'd be mad, you know, she said that "Esker Holland up there, said Jesus come to the foot "of her bed and told her "He was gonna take her home because "she was suffering so much, and I'm sicker than she is."
Well, my granddaddy down at the Farmers Federation, he'd be standing out there swapping watches. He would sometimes trade watches six times in one day. I remember one Saturday we were standing there with him, somebody said, well would you look coming up the street? And we looked down the street and coming right around the curb, right there in front of the fountain was a Cadillac. Well, a lot of us had never seen a Cadillac. This was a white convertible Cadillac. None of us had seen a white convertible Cadillac. And so we all just sort of moved out, you know, to the edge of the sidewalk, and watched it come. When it got a little closer, I heard somebody in the crowd say, "Would you look at that woman? "That woman on the passenger side, "what's that she's got on?" And somebody said, "Why, I think it's a fur coat." And then somebody else says, "But ain't it pink? "Yeah, it's a pink fur coat." "Well for heaven's sake. "Well look at her hair. "Her hair's unusual. "Her hair's pink." "Why, it is, ain't it." "Well she's smoking a cigarette." "Well I'll swear, I've never seen anything like that." And just as that Cadillac got right even with us, the driver turned around and winked at us and tooted the horn, and it was my worthless uncle. Well, I heard several people in the crowd say, "Well, blow the tannery whistle!"
My father was a mountain musician. I've got a lot of photographs of him at home, playing a banjo or a mandolin or a guitar. He actually had his own band. It was called the Sylva String Band. I think sometimes it was called the Smoky Mountain String Band. He played square dances mostly, at little towns around here, Waynesville, Canton, Cashiers Valley, Andrews, Murphy. Sometimes he went off to exotic places like Clayton, Georgia, or Walhalla. He's even rumored to have gone to Nashville a time or two. My father was killed when I was less than two years old, and I was born in 1935. He was killed by a guy that was bombed out of his head on wood alcohol. Came and sat outside the station every day, sort of a fixture out there, sat on a little Coke crate. This particular morning, he had an old rusty pistol. He showed it to several people that entered the service station. They didn't think anything about it. They said it didn't even look like it would fire. But eventually he came in the station and walked over to my father and pointed the pistol at him and my father ducked and said, "Don't point that pistol at me, Claude." And he shot my father right in the top of the head. I didn't know an awful lot about my father's death for a long time because my grandfather was so upset by it that he wouldn't allow it to be discussed in his presence. Never to be a topic of conversation when he was around. So what I got, I sorta got by bits and pieces, chance remarks, things people said to me. I was coming home from school one evening and an old man stopped me on the back street in Sylva and he said, "Well, you're Happy's boy." I said, "Yeah." He said, "I Know'd you was 'cause "you favor him a little around the eyes there." He says, "I know'd your daddy. "I used to make music with him. "Did anybody ever tell you about your daddy's funeral? "When the church doors opened, we was all behind the coffin "and it was raining sort of a little misty kind of rain "and, I noticed that there was people outside. "Well, when we got outside, I seen people standing up "in the woods. "I seen them standing all over the graveyard. "I seen cars parked along the road, an awful lot of people. "I realized that all of them had come-- "well, it wasn't so much your father. "He was popular and everybody liked him, "but they had come because of the band. "There was people there from other towns, "Canton, Waynesville, Bryson City. "Because they knowed if your daddy was dead, "the band was gone too. "We wouldn't be playing anymore. "And so it made a certain amount of sense, you know, "what your granddaddy wanted us to do, "play the Raindrop Waltz at the funeral "because it was just like the dances. "When we played the Raindrop Waltz, why "the party was over and it was time to go home."
I'd say about six months after he died, my mother took me to the local grocery store where they also sold children's clothes, and she bought me a little short pant suit. And she brought me up here and she left me right there on the porch, and then she caught the bus for Knoxville. Well, after about two weeks, my grandparents figured out she wasn't coming back. They had another young'un to raise. They weren't all that thrilled about it, they'd raised five of their own. And then, as my grandfather frequently told me, I didn't look all that promising. You see, my granddaddy believed in bad blood. In other words, if I showed any inclination toward criminal tendencies, or maybe I was gonna be retarded, he assumed that had to be from bad blood that I got from my mother's side of the family. Watched me all the time. I heard him say one day, I was out here in the yard, playing. He said, "Agnes, look at him." And my granny looked at me and she says, "Thy Lord God, he's just standing like a Teester. "That crazy 'un. "The one that used to run naked in the woods, "till they caught him and put him away." My granddaddy would call me up on the porch and he'd say, "Listen son, you worry me. "You don't look like a Carden. "You don't stand like one. "I think you're a Teester. "But you might have a little Carden in you. "So fight it, boy, fight it!"
This is the old barn. When I was a child, it was full of hay. And it used to be one of my favorite places to hide out. I'd get up there and read comic books. I had a rich fantasy life up there. And of course, this is where I came when I reenacted Sergeant Preston and Yukon King. "Alright, King." Of course I was seven years old. So I said, "Alright, King. "We have tracked Sergeant Preston's major enemy, "his nemesis, Pierre, the evil French trader "to this abandoned mine shaft. "Now I know that he is in there, King. "I want you to go in there and get him out." And then I would do King, you know. And I would crawl back in the hay, you know. And I would get Pierre. And I'd throw him out on the snow, you know. And Pierre would bound up and he'd say, "You think you have captured Pierre? "You have not, I shall escape yet again." And I looked over and my granddaddy was standing at the top of the steps. He could come up with his pitchfork to get a little hay down. And I'd never seen him look at me like he was afraid of me. He sorta ventured out into the barn loft and peered around to see who those other people were I was talking to. And then he did a remarkable thing. He walked backwards down the steps into the feed room. Vanished down there. In a few minutes I heard him say, "Well, blow the tannery whistle."
That night in the bed, I heard him tell my grandmother-- he had a unique way of going to sleep, he complained himself to sleep. And my grandmother was a martyred woman. She'd lay there and listen to that every night. He would talk about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal, and the fact that the pig had the scours and the corn hadn't made anything, and I just don't know what we're gonna do. And the spring's stopped up again. I'd go to sleep sometimes in that big monologue. But, on this particular night, he talked about me. He said, "Agnes, "that young'un's queer. "I went back up in that barn after he left, "there wasn't no dog up there nor nothing. "I'll tell you what it is, it's bad blood. "It's that bad blood from his mama's side of the family "that's coming out. "Any mind knowed it was gonna happen. "Now you just think about it, Agnes. "His great granddaddy on his mother's side of the family, "that's the one that shot hisself and fell down the well. "A week before the found him. "Don't that tell you something when they don't miss you for a whole week." And then they had to move because they couldn't drink the water anymore.
There used to be a huge June Apple tree stood right about here. Was a monster. I was still going to the Ritz theater on Saturday, but one Saturday I arrived, and it wasn't a cowboy movie. I mean no "Sunset Carson" or "Don Red Barry", or "Lash LaRue". It was a "Tarzan" movie. Well, I went in and sat down and I have never witnessed anything so moving, so compelling in my life. It was an incredibly beautiful story. It's just filled with great symbols and messages. It was highly emotional and profound, I think. It was called "Tarzan goes to New York." Well, when I came out of there, I was a changed man. I ran all the way home. I come running up the little trail here, went all the way over to the barn and I got my granddaddy's cow rope. It was a 50-foot cow rope, had a snap on the end of it. And I come back over here and I climb this June Apple tree, climbed right into the top of that June Apple tree and I threw that cow rope right over the tallest limb and tied it up there. And then I took the other end of that rope and put it around my waist and snapped it. And then I took up all the slack, and finally when it was all taken up, I was balanced up there on that tree limb, you know. And that's when I said, And I swung over on a limb and I stopped and I talked to Cheetah, swung back over on this limb and talked to Boy, swung back up here and talked to Jane. I didn't talk to her a whole lot. I never did know what to say to her. I did that until I was tired. I had blisters on my hand and it wasn't fun anymore and I decided to quit. But just as I started to quit, it occurred to me that I hadn't done what Tarzan always did in every comic book that I had ever read. He always killed the crocodile. So I looked down at the foot of the June Apple tree, where the Amazon river was running by. It was full of crocodiles. And then Cheetah-- he always was an awkward monkey-- he just fell off of a limb right into the Amazon river. And those crocodiles got him. And so I had to save him. And so I pull my imaginary knife and I said And I jumped off the limb. Well the rope didn't reach the ground. I guess it was about two feet from the ground it says whoomp. And every apple in that tree came out at one time, whoomp. And I just wound up like a watch spring. Got all the way up here. And I went back this way. I said, "Help, help". I mean, that rope was cutting me in two, right? I was in bad shape and that was such a pitiful little squeak, you know, nobody could hear that.
Well, I was lucky somebody did. Guy's name was Engle Wood. He was on his way to work the night shift at the tannery. Came down the road here, and he heard it. He told me years later, he said, "I thought you's dead. "I heard that pitiful little sound. "Help, help. "I come down here in the yard and there you was turning "at the end of that rope. "You turned blue. "Yeah, that rope just about squeezed you in two. "I got my pocket knife and I cut that rope in two, "I had to take it off of you. "You had a bad rope burn there on your stomach. "And then I thought, well, he can't even walk. "I'll carry him over and put him on the front porch. "And so I carried you over and I laid you "on the front porch there. "And then I thought, well, I ought to tell Arthur. "So I went up and knocked on the door, "and Arthur come to the door. "And I was just trying to be funny, you know, "just trying to make a joke. "I said, 'Arthur, your grandson, hanged hisself out here 'in the apple tree'. "Your granddaddy didn't laugh. "He told me this long story about "your great granddaddy shooting hisself and falling down "in the well. "He said he thought you had inherited some bad blood "and that, you had a self-destructive tendency in you. "That you was trying to commit suicide "like some of them other'uns on your mother's side "of the family." "What becomes of a young'un like him? "I don't know what they do for a living. "What do they do when they get out in the world?"
People tended to say, "Well, Arthur, the way you described the boy, "he sounds like a college boy. "Why don't you, send him up to Western Carolina "where there's a bunch just like him." Well, to make a long story short. That's what happened. I went to Western Carolina, and I got to hand it to those people, they had insight. There were people up there that were just like me. And I loved it. I've never been happier. I mean for heaven's sake-- there was plays and concerts and dances. And we used to sit in the student union all night and drink coffee and talk about the meaning of life. Well, our last quarter in school, my granddaddy got sick. We didn't know what was wrong with him for a while, but eventually we knew he had cancer, and I saw a healthy, robust man go from 200 pounds to 150, 120. I came home one weekend and he was sitting right here on this front porch, had a quilt over his lap. He was staring at the Balsam Mountains back there. My granny called me in the house and she said, "He just weighs 90 pounds."
I went back up to Western the week after that. North Carolina State had funded Western Carolina for a new library and they were so delighted, so pleased, that they took all the books out of the old library at Western, the old Joyner building, and they piled them up in front of the student union and they put a little sign out in front and said, any book 25 cents. I got in that pile of books and I found a set of encyclopedias. It was called "Richard's Pictorial Encyclopedia". I still have them. They're up in the attic now. I got a friend to help me and we loaded them in his car, and we hauled them down here to this house. And I stacked them up on the porch right by my granddaddy's chair, you know, so that as he read them, he could pass them over and put them on this side of his chair. And he did read 'em. See, he didn't fool me. I'd heard him say a whole lot about educated fools, and they pretended to have contempt for people that had a college education. But I knew he had a hunger to know things. He had been ordering things from WCKY Cincinnati for years. He is a sucker for anything Wayne Rainey told him that would make him a better informed person. So those encyclopedias started moving from this side of his chair to that side of his chair. I'd read it coming home because, he waylaid me. I'd try to sneak in the house and he'd say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, college boy. "Whoa, whoa, hold it right there. "All right, now. "How wide is the Tigris Euphrates river "at its widest point?" I said, "Grandfather, I don't know." He says, "You don't know. "Well I do. "Right here it is. "It occurs to me that we could have bought a set "of these things and you wouldn't have had to gone up there. "You could have stayed home."
So the day came that there I stood in front of Hoey auditorium at Western Carolina College. While I was standing there, in my cap and gown and my diploma. My Uncle Asbury said, "Well I want you to look coming here. "Look yonder." And we looked, and it was my granddaddy. That old pickup truck with that load of cow manure in the back. Parked over at the student center, and got out. Asbury, said, "Well, he's so weak, he can't walk over here. "I'll have to go bring him back." And so he did. He went over and brought him back and it took a long time. And granddaddy took little bitty steps when he walked. When he got back, he's exhausted, you know, sweat just pouring off of him, and hasslin' for breath. He stood there a long time. Looked at me-- that diploma. And finally when he could speak, he said, "Well, blow the tannery whistle!"
