A RICH HERITAGE FROM BERWIND, W.VA. – UNIQUELY OURS by JOHN BURNETT
Music Unforgettable PLACES Old Town - The Tipple - Rose of Sharon New Town - Coke Oven Row - Mount Nebo Tank Hill - New Town Hill - Slack Pile Company Store - Rift - Kerr Grade School Club House - The Break Through - Train Station Round The Hollow - Warrior Hollow - The Shop Sawmill Hollow - Doctor's Office - The Bottom Swinging Bridge - Big Office - Betty's Tea Room Cement Bridge - Homer Hardin's - Scout House Bus Stop - Baseball Diamond Swimming in Dry Fork Creek - Rift 1939 Howard Easley Background - Ed Martin foreground - Andrew Jones Photos contributed by: Geneva Ellis Burnett EVENTS Revival - Easter Egg Hunt - Graduation - Prom Night Vacation Bible School - Baptism - Skeet Shooting - Flood Season Hog Killing Time - Sleigh Riding - Football Season - Halloween Canning Season - Coalcar Pick-up - Basketball Season Hunting Season - Carnival Time - Baseball Season - Blackberry Picking Time Fishing Season - Picnic Time - Planting Season HOG KILLING TIME By John A. Burnett Jr. After having experienced many hog killing seasons in Berwind over many years, it is an experience which stays with you. No matter where you go in this world you know when it is hog killing time! Everyone from Berwind and the surrounding areas can attest to this fact. Even in Los Angeles, CA I have stepped out of the house and realized immediately, oh, it's hog killing time! There is a certain chill in the air and the distinct smell of wood burning in fireplaces that reinforces this stark reality in one's awareness. In Berwind you would see white smoke billowing from all the chimneys around. Outside you would notice steam vapor from your mouth and nose as you breathed out. Yes, hog killing season is a strange phenomenon, but unmistakable by those who know it well. My sister Claudean is utterly amazed to hear me, my brother Jimmy, and others talk about the realization of hog killing season. Claudean was only about 2 years old when we left West Virginia. Hog killing in Berwind was usually a community affair. All of the men in the neighborhood would help to slaughter the hogs. There were usually many curious onlookers attentively watching every step of the process. The average family who had hogs had two in a pen which was constructed of wood, including the floor. The pen had wooden troughs for food and water for the hogs. Part of the pen was covered to provide shade for the hogs in summer and shelter from rain and storms. Hog pens were located some distance from housing areas as hogs had quite an odor and old sows were thought to smell worse than old boars. In my opinion they all stunk equally! "One time my brother and I both fell into the Bradford's hog pen. I think I fell in first and Jimmy got in to help me out. This happened while my mother was at an Usher Board Meeting at church and it fell to our great-aunt Amanda to clean us up, and she cried through the whole ordeal. On another occasion, after having gotten into the hog pen, we went to church with hog manure all on our clothes and shoes. People in church kept smelling this terrible odor, around us, and discovered what had happened." On the row of houses where we lived, behind and above the Club House, hog pens were built in the area above the back road which also provided access to a coal box in each back yard. These were buildings which had roofs and coal was kept inside them for cooking, heating water, and heating homes. Coal was ordered by the ton, and a truck would come and off load the coal into the coal box. Some distance above the back road was another fire road just at the base of the woods. Hog pens were usually constructed closer to the fire road. Both the back road and the fire road had blackberry bushes growing next to them where other friends and I picked many buckets of blackberries in the summer. Our fingers would be purple from picking blackberries and, of course, our tongues would be purple from eating blackberries as we picked. My mother made wonderful blackberry cobbler and sometimes canned blackberries for later use. If we were lucky we could sell a bucket of blackberries to a neighbor for a buck or two to buy some candy, a toy, or fishing supplies at the company store. In preparation for slaughtering hogs, 3 feet long tree trunks were cut which were about 2 inches thick. They were cut to a point on each end and nailed usually to the side of a wash house, a separate building which many homes in Berwind had. If the house had no wash house, the tree trunks were nailed against the outside of the coal box structure high enough to hang the hogs on them by their hind feet. The pointed end of the cut tree trunk was inserted just inside the tendon of the hind feet and the tendons were strong enough to hang the hogs by them. A 50 gallon metal barrel was tilted at an angle so that it could still hold water and the hog could be slid into the barrel. The barrel would be filled with as much water as possible, and a fire was built under the barrel to heat the water. When everything was ready and the water was very hot, the hog pen would be broken open and the hogs brought down near the barrel of hot water. The hogs were shot with a single shot rifle in the center of their forehead. When the hog fell, its throat would be cut with a butcher knife to drain the blood. The hog was put into the barrel of hot water and taken out, then all of the hair was scraped off the hog with knives. Not a hair was left anywhere on the hog's skin. The hog was then hung up by it's hind feet and gutted. The entrails were usually put into a well sterilized round metal tub usually used for bathing, and washing clothes. There were two handles on opposite sides of the tub so the tub could be carried by two people. Every part of the hog was used and nothing was wasted. The intestines were "chitlins" and were also used for sausage casings. The liver, heart, kidneys and everything were eaten. Extra skin from cuts of meat was deep fried, salted, and eaten for snacks. Chitlins required a great deal of work. They had to be thoroughly cleaned out, then every bit of fat cleaned out of them before boiling them for hours. They are considered very special, but can really stink up your house while cooking. Some people cook a potato or onion in them which supposedly takes out some of the smell. I have a friend from South Carolina whose mother cooks her chitlins out on her back porch in a crock pot. She somehow packages them and mails them to Leroy by UPS to California. When he receives them, they are still warm! This is hard to believe, but true. The hog fat was boiled to get the lard which was used a lot in cooking. The residual that was left over from boiling the fat is called crackling. That was used to make crackling cornbread which was very tasty. Hog heads, feet and ears were boiled until done, then ground with a crank type grinder to make hog head cheese, a jelled sandwich type meat often eaten between crackers. Another name for hog head cheese was "souse meat." I even made hog head cheese after moving to California many years ago, and yes, hog heads are sold here even today. I attend a New Years Day party every year in which a large pig is cooked in the ground, including the head. The meat is very tasty! In Berwind the family who raised the hogs usually kept most of the choice pieces of meat, and rightly so, like tender loin, chops, hams, etc. Everyone who helped slaughter the hogs was given some meat. Hams were salted and hung to cure. Sometimes hams were sugar cured as well. Slaughtering hogs required many hours of tedious work. In slavery times, only the poorest cuts and throw away parts of the hog were given to the slaves, so they learned to cook that meat and make delicious food with it. As a result you have "soul food" today, which is a delicacy and much in demand. Vegetables, especially things like green beans and collard greens were always cooked with a piece of ham hock or other pork in them. Soups, white beans, pinto beans and limas were always seasoned with pork meat. Hogs in Berwind were fed table scraps, fruit peelings and cores, potato, carrot and other vegetable peelings. They were also fed a mash which was mixed with water, and they were fed corn and corn cobs. Most of the stuff fed to hogs was called "slop," and the act of feeding hogs was called "slopping the hogs." People would say "I have to go slop the hogs." Charlie Dues, a black resident in Old Town Berwind had a horse and a wagon which he constructed with car wheels on it. Charlie collected slop from many white and black Berwind residents to feed his hogs with. The slop was usually kept in a bucket outside each house where Charlie could easily get it and then dump it into a bucket on his cart. This was really recycling and ecology at its best, but no one knew those terms then like we do now. When Charlie slaughtered his hogs everyone who contributed table scraps and leftovers was given some of the hog meat for their effort. Hogs were usually fed twice a day; in the morning and in the evening. They would pretty much eat anything. Our next door neighbors and relatives Willie and Martha Barton had hogs, and one day I was up to the hog pen at feeding time with some of the older boys. The hogs had been fed and someone mentioned that hogs would even eat coal, so they got some coal and put it in the trough and the hogs started crunching away eating the coal! I thought that was fascinating since coal was a pretty hard substance. I was very amazed that hogs could eat coal! I told my neighbor friend Kay Bradford about it and Kay didn't believe it, so I got some coal from our coal box and took her to the hog pen to prove to her that hogs ate coal. She was amazed as well, when they started chewing the coal. Kay and I would take coal up to the hog pen every day and watch the hogs chew the coal. Soon after, the Bartons slaughtered their hogs. The chitlins were so black from the hogs eating coal every day that the chitlins had to be thrown away and could not be eaten. I heard years later about their having to throw the chitlins away, and don't think they ever knew what actually happened. Though this is a funny story now, I regret that Kay and I fed coal to those hogs not knowing the result of our actions. When I was a very young kid about 4 years old, my parents raised hogs and slaughtered them. They couldn't finish cutting all of the meat and storing it etc. that evening, so they laid the meat out on newspaper on the dining table and on the dining room floor. My brother Jimmy and I slept on one side of the dining area and I was afraid of the meat in there. I would not go into that room alone, and I was afraid to sleep in there. I cried until my parents let me sleep in their room, which was as far away inside the house as I could get from that frightening hog meat! I was one greatly relieved kid when the meat was taken out of that room the next day. Wherever you go in this world, when you realize it is hog killing time, think of our little town in West Virginia and the memories that have affected our lives forever. FOR THE DISCRIMINATING TASTE Moonshine/White Lightning - Cracklin Bread - Squirrel Home Brew - Pig Feet - Rabbit Chitlins - Pig Tail - Ground Hog Neck Bones - Ox Tail - Pheasant Collard Greens - Sweet Potato Pie - Wild Greens Poke Salad - Pork Skins - Watercress Rhubarb Pie - Fried okra - Mint Tea Sassafras Tea - Fried Green Tomatoes Souse Meat/Hog Head Cheese - Blackberry Cobbler FISHING IN BERWIND By John A. Burnett Jr. As a young boy growing up in Berwind one of my most favorite things to do was to fish. If my mother sent me to the company store to buy something, I had to cross the steel bridge over the creek to get to the store. I would look at the creek and imagine all the big fish I could catch out of it. I would stop on the bridge to look, on the way to the store, and when returning home. Sometimes I did not have fishing line or hooks and neither item was terribly expensive and could be purchased at the company store. Any tree branch could be used as a pole, and if I didn't have a sinker I would tie a small rock on the line which worked just as well. One of my favorite places to fish was from a large boulder on the creek bank just beyond the bridge next to the doctor's office. The water seemed deeper there and other people seemed to have good luck catching fish there. There was a dirt walkway above the creek bank with thick >wild grape vines growing in the trees next to the creek. A small path provided access down to the creek. Further along the walkway the creek made a wide turn to the right, and there was a footbridge over the creek which was a shortcut to New Town Bottom. Red earthworms were used for bait and could be dug for in areas where dishwater or wash water was frequently thrown or piped to. Night crawlers were also used and could be found in grassy areas in most people's yards and in the park like areas around the bank, big office, and post office. You had to look for night crawlers, of course, in the grass at night with a flashlight, and a fairly quick hand. Each worm had a hole that it lived in and you had to catch the worm before it retreated back into its hole which it was never fully out of. One could often catch two at a time if two night crawlers were mating. While extending from their individual holes they would be joined together. If grabbed at the place where they were joined, you had yourself two night crawlers. Night crawlers were much larger than red worms and therefore more difficult to keep on the hook. You usually had to tear them in half to put them on the fishhook. One of the best baits that fish went for in a big way, was crawfish meat. Everyone in Berwind called them "crawdads." Crawdads were plentiful in the clear water streams around the hollow in New Town and in Old Town. They were, however, more difficult to catch since they were very fast. They usually lived under rocks in the streams, and one usually had to get his feet wet to catch them. They were various sizes and the bigger they were, the faster they could escape! They always moved backward at lightening speed and their large pinchers were a deterrent. We never once thought about eating crawdads and today they are a delicacy in New Orleans and all over the US. They are sold at "Popeye Chicken" one block from where I presently live. Billy Griffin taught me, his younger brother Saint John, and nephew Boomer, a trick to get fish to bite every time. He would take chewing tobacco and put it in a jar with a small amount of water and mash it up into a liquid. Then you put your worm on the hook and dip it into the liquid. The fish went for it like crazy. The only thing was that kids our age could not always get chewing tobacco. There were two kinds that I knew of; one was flakes of tobacco which came in a cheerfully colored paper bag and was "Beechnut" brand, and the other was a rectangular hard plug of tobacco which my father chewed called "Day's Work." On rare occasions I could break off a small piece of daddy's tobacco if it was around, but that was not often. I never thought to try snuff, but that wasn't easy to come by either. Quite a number of women in Berwind used snuff, and the act was called "dipping snuff." They would put it in their bottom lip and hold it in their mouth. Periodically they had to spit, and sometimes a coffee can was kept around for that purpose. Miss June dipped snuff, and she would spit on the ground when we were fishing, usually where no one would be walking. In general, it was thought not to be a nice habit. On two separate occasions I tried chewing tobacco and dipping snuff and didn't know not to swallow them. Both times I became very ill, so it was a hard learned lesson, and well learned indeed! I had a good fishing buddy named Charlie Simms who taught me a lot about finding lead along the railroad track and how he and his dad used to melt lead to make sinkers. He told me that "there was a small charge type device that was put on the railroad track to let the engineer know when to stop the train when picking up loaded coal cars. It made a small pop like a firecracker when the train rolled over it, and the engineer then knew he had moved the train far enough to go back and pick up more coal cars." Part of the charge was made of lead and we would pick those up between the railroad tracks. The lead was pliable enough that we could hammer it with a rock and attach it to the fishing line as a sinker. Since I was black and Charlie was white, I never was allowed inside his house and he never was in our house, although I don't think my parents would have objected to his coming into our house. When I went to Charlie's house I would knock on the back door. If Charlie was not eating lunch or dinner or not on punishment for something, he would come outside. He was a very animated and energetic kid and always excited about what he was doing. My family lived on a row of houses behind the club house where the houses were situated on the crest of the mountain. There was lots of space underneath the houses with the back part against the hill and the front part resting on pilings made of mortar and stones. There were steps down to the front yard from the front porch, on which most families had a swing and other chairs. Charlie and I would dig for worms under our house and under the Bradford's house next door, so we always had plenty of bait. We kept the worms in empty tin cans partly filled with dirt and would take one worm out to bait our fishhook. Charlie would take me to his latest fishing spot, and I would take him to the latest one's that I knew about. Sometimes we caught fish and other times we didn't. If the fishing wasn't so good that day, we would skip rocks across the creek. We enjoyed going down to Rift to the area called the "Break Through," which had high cliffs on both sides, rapids, and huge boulders next to the water with flat rock areas on both sides. The water seemed to churn at the Break Through, and was so narrow and deep that one could almost jump across from one side to the other. Further down it became a wide expanse of calm water where two creeks melded into one. There was a high railroad trestle there which had to be traversed if you wanted to fish on the other side of the Break Through. South of the trestle was a bridge over the creek which all vehicles crossed en route to Berwind from War. Just upstream from the bridge was a large square cement platform which jutted out into the creek. It was a favorite fishing spot for many people including Charlie and me. In the area where the two creeks met we would sometimes find my great-uncle Frank Divens fishing. My Family members affectionately called him "Daddy Frank." Daddy Frank always had the latest fishing equipment complete with a rubber wading suit. He would be out in the water where Charlie and I could not go. He had all kinds of lures, expensive fishing rods and reels and a very fancy fly rod with a reel that had a lever on it that when pressed, retracted the line back onto its spool. He seemed to be an expert at casting lures and at fly casting. I had fantasies of growing up and some day owning the kind of fishing gear that Daddy Frank had. Sometimes Daddy Frank fished in the creek behind Kerr Grade School where he, Aunt Amanda, and their daughter Amanda Ruth, and later I also lived with them next to the school. At recess I would watch him fishing from the playground and wish I was out there fishing too. Periodically Daddy Frank would give me 50 cent to dig some fishing worms for him and I was excited to do it because it meant I could buy fishhooks or line with the money! Daddy Frank, his wife Aunt Amanda, and several of their friends would sometimes go to Cherokee Lake in Tennessee and come back with coolers full of fish that they caught there. Unfortunately I never got to go on any of those fishing trips. I often fished with Mrs. June Smith and Mrs. Roberta Graves. In Berwind, married or adult women were called Miss and their first name. To show respect it was usually Miss June or Miss Roberta. No one bothered to say Mrs. even though that was understood. By the time I was fishing with these ladies, I had a rod and reel of my own. We would go in the evening to fish and stay until after dark. we each had a Y shaped tree branch that had been cut to rest our fishing rods on. The bottom was cut to a point so that the stick could be easily stuck into the sand. The rod rested in the V portion of the stick with the back part of the rod resting on the sand behind. Oddly enough, Miss Roberta was afraid of earthworms but loved to fish. She would wear gloves to bait her hook, but many times Miss June or I would bait her hook so she could get her line back into the water quickly. We used flashlights after dark to see the line jerk when a fish tried to take the bait. The end of the rod would bounce up and down when a fish was caught on the line. The fishing reels had a tension setting which allowed the line to be pulled by a fish and the reel would make a loud zipping or fast clicking sound when the fish ran with the hook. It was very exciting to hear the reel make that sound and we would immediately grab the rod to set the hook, and you knew you usually had a fish on the line! We caught a lot of fish at night, and we each would have a stringer of fish in the water. Invariably a water moccasin would swim over toward our fish and that would be the abrupt end to our night fishing that evening! Everything would be packed up and we would leave immediately! One evening when I was fishing with Miss June on the creek bank behind the grandstand of Berwind Ball Diamond, I caught a black looking turtle which looked to be about 6 to 8 pounds. As soon as I got him on the shore, he got off the hook and headed for the water! Miss June grabbed him by the tail and flung him back further on shore, then she put him in a big bucket that she carried which he could not get out of. Since initially I had caught the turtle, Miss June cooked it and invited me out to her house to eat some of it. It was boiled like a stew, and the meat was very white and tender. It tasted like chicken to me. I have eaten turtle a number of times since and always enjoyed it. The type of fish that were caught in Berwind were Silver Sides; Suckers, which had a round looking mouth; Catfish; Bluegill; and occasionally a Small-mouth Bass. How these fish survived in the creek in Berwind I don't know because most of the time the creek was black with coal dust washed from coal at any number of coal mining operations upstream and including at Berwind. When the creek was flooded, the water was a muddy brown with all kinds of logs, branches, and other debris carried along in its current. It was always fascinating to see all the different stuff floating downstream. We felt fortunate living on the edge of the mountain rather than in the flat areas as there was no chance of our house getting flooded. I continued fishing as a teenager in Indianapolis, Indiana where we moved to, and later in California where I became partial to salt water fishing in the Pacific Ocean. The largest fish I ever caught was a 21 pound Halibut on a fishing boat out of Redondo Beach, CA near Los Angeles. RAISING CHICKENS IN BERWIND By John A. Burnett Jr When I was a young boy in Berwind, my mother Geneva Burnett, raised chickens. Our hen house was built by mother and two teenage neighbors June and William Edwards. Their nicknames were June Bug and Peter Bug respectively. They were the sons of Carlos and Lillie Edwards, and Lillie was my mother's best friend. We all lived in the row of houses on the edge of the mountain behind the Club House in New Town. Mother usually ordered baby chicks from Sears and Roebuck and they were delivered to the Berwind Post Office. They were shipped in a cardboard container which had holes in it. 50 to 100 chicks were ordered at a time. Mother always ordered 100 chicks. They would always ship more chicks than you ordered because one or two of them would be dead on the bottom of the box when you received them. They would all huddle together in the box and if one of them fell down, it was trampled by the other chicks and would be as flat as a pancake. Usually other people had ordered baby chicks from Sears and Roebuck too, and when we would go to pick ours up from the post office we would hear all of the chick's peeping sounds behind the counter. A great percentage of the baby chicks ordered from Sears and Roebuck turned out to be roosters. Once the baby chicks were brought home they were kept in a metal container called a brooder which had light bulbs in it to keep the chicks warm at night, and there was a place for food and water as well. When the chicks were large enough, they were put into the chicken yard where they would take on the habits of all chickens -- "Early to bed and early to rise." We raised many White Leghorns which had white feathers, Rhode Island Reds which had red feathers, and Domineckers which had black and white speckled feathers. White Leghorn hens lay white eggs, Rhode Island Reds lay brown eggs, and it wasn't until I went to the Los Angeles County fair about 15 years ago, that I realized Dominecker hens lay brown eggs also. I had never paid attention to that growing up in Berwind. When roosters were mating with hens they would peck all of the hen's hind feathers off and would keep pecking them, so to prevent the continual pecking, mother would fit a device on the rooster's bill which had a metal flap and prevented the rooster from pecking outward at hens but allowed it to peck downward to eat and drink water. After a hen lays an egg she immediately starts cackling, so you always knew which hen had just laid an egg. The chickens were kept in a wire fenced area when very young, but later were allowed to walk around in the yard. Some hens would build a nest outside the hen house in the bushes, and we would collect eggs from there as well. They never seemed to wander very far from the area of the hen house. When a hen was ready to "set" and hatch eggs she would make a little clucking sound. Mother would then accumulate fertile eggs which could be found by holding the egg up to a light bulb. If the egg had a speck of blood inside it, it was fertile. Mother would place the eggs into the nest and the hen would set for 6 weeks until the chicks hatched. All of the baby chicks knew who their mother hen was and would follow her around the yard as she made her distinctive clucking sound. This is one of the sounds that you never hear in the city, but I still remember it and would know it anywhere. A few baby chicks were sometimes bought for children at Easter time. Their feathers were dyed various bright colors: yellow, red, green, purple or blue, and were sold in stores as special Easter pets. Ducks and rabbits were sold at that time too. When the chicks were put with the other chickens, usually some mother hen would take them as hers and raise that chick along with her own, I have even seen a mother hen take a motherless duckling and raise it with her chicks, but that was not in my mother's chicken yard. Some years later, the practice of selling dyed baby chicks, ducks and rabbits fell into disfavor and was thought to be cruel since some children would choke them and do other horrible things to them, so I think it was eventually outlawed. Speaking of horrible things; Occasionally our neighbors would get a new dog, usually a mongrel, which took pleasure in killing our chickens. Apparently my dad had an agreement with Mr Ocie Bradford next door that if their dog was coming over to our yard and killing our chickens, then my dad could kill the dog. I remember 2 occasions when my dad shot and killed the neighbor's dog in our yard, from the dining room window. If the dog was killing our chickens, that was the end of that dog! It was very common for everyone to walk through each other's back yard to get to any house on the row. The Bradfords had a very mean rooster who would attack anyone walking through their yard. They had a rock wall behind their house and if the rooster was up there when you walked by he would fly down and try to spur you with his long sharp spurs and dangerous claws. One day a bunch of us boys were going through the Bradford's yard. We had been up in the back road and had walked toward the rock wall to jump down and continue to our yard. The mean rooster was digging in the dirt down below the rock wall where large boulders were stacked one on top of another. One of the guys -- I think it was Bobby Faucett, picked up one of the boulders and dropped it on the rooster, and that was the end of him! The Bradfords never complained about it because that was one mean old Rhode Island Red rooster! Our chickens were raised to eat so we would kill a few at a time when we wanted chicken. I used to help kill our chickens and we would wring their neck until it broke away from the body. A round metal bathtub would be turned upside down over the chicken to keep it from jumping all over the yard until it was dead. We would then dip the chicken in boiling hot water to make the feathers easy to remove. There would also be hair like feathers left on the chicken. We would light a piece of rolled up newspaper or paper bag on fire and burn those feathers off. Then the chicken would be gutted and washed thoroughly for cooking. Sometimes on the weekend my dad would come home at night and go to the hen house and get several chickens to take for his drinking buddies to eat. The chickens were only half grown and mother would complain bitterly about it, but he would take them anyway. He would do the same thing again the next weekend! When my mother was a young girl, her aunt asked if she could kill a chicken? She said yes Aunt Adelaide I can kill a chicken. So Aunt Adelaide told her to go catch one of the chickens and kill it. She had watched it being done and thought she could do it. She wrung and wrung the chicken's neck until the skin broke and pulled up over the chicken's head. The chicken was walking around the yard with the neck skin pulled up over its head and eyes. That was a sight to see! It was some time before she learned to kill a chicken properly.
Music Unforgettable
PLACES
Old Town - The Tipple - Rose of Sharon
New Town - Coke Oven Row - Mount Nebo
Tank Hill - New Town Hill - Slack Pile
Company Store - Rift - Kerr Grade School
Club House - The Break Through - Train Station
Round The Hollow - Warrior Hollow - The Shop
Sawmill Hollow - Doctor's Office - The Bottom
Swinging Bridge - Big Office - Betty's Tea Room
Cement Bridge - Homer Hardin's - Scout House
Bus Stop - Baseball Diamond
Swimming in Dry Fork Creek - Rift 1939
Howard Easley
Background - Ed Martin foreground - Andrew Jones
Photos contributed by: Geneva Ellis Burnett
EVENTS
Revival - Easter Egg Hunt - Graduation - Prom Night
Vacation Bible School - Baptism - Skeet Shooting - Flood Season
Hog Killing Time - Sleigh Riding - Football Season - Halloween
Canning Season - Coalcar Pick-up - Basketball Season
Hunting Season - Carnival Time - Baseball Season - Blackberry Picking Time
Fishing Season - Picnic Time - Planting Season
HOG KILLING TIME By John A. Burnett Jr.
After having experienced many hog killing seasons in Berwind over many years, it is an experience which stays with you. No matter where you go in this world you know when it is hog killing time! Everyone from Berwind and the surrounding areas can attest to this fact. Even in Los Angeles, CA I have stepped out of the house and realized immediately, oh, it's hog killing time! There is a certain chill in the air and the distinct smell of wood burning in fireplaces that reinforces this stark reality in one's awareness. In Berwind you would see white smoke billowing from all the chimneys around. Outside you would notice steam vapor from your mouth and nose as you breathed out. Yes, hog killing season is a strange phenomenon, but unmistakable by those who know it well. My sister Claudean is utterly amazed to hear me, my brother Jimmy, and others talk about the realization of hog killing season. Claudean was only about 2 years old when we left West Virginia.
Hog killing in Berwind was usually a community affair. All of the men in the neighborhood would help to slaughter the hogs. There were usually many curious onlookers attentively watching every step of the process. The average family who had hogs had two in a pen which was constructed of wood, including the floor. The pen had wooden troughs for food and water for the hogs. Part of the pen was covered to provide shade for the hogs in summer and shelter from rain and storms. Hog pens were located some distance from housing areas as hogs had quite an odor and old sows were thought to smell worse than old boars. In my opinion they all stunk equally!
"One time my brother and I both fell into the Bradford's hog pen. I think I fell in first and Jimmy got in to help me out. This happened while my mother was at an Usher Board Meeting at church and it fell to our great-aunt Amanda to clean us up, and she cried through the whole ordeal. On another occasion, after having gotten into the hog pen, we went to church with hog manure all on our clothes and shoes. People in church kept smelling this terrible odor, around us, and discovered what had happened."
On the row of houses where we lived, behind and above the Club House, hog pens were built in the area above the back road which also provided access to a coal box in each back yard. These were buildings which had roofs and coal was kept inside them for cooking, heating water, and heating homes. Coal was ordered by the ton, and a truck would come and off load the coal into the coal box. Some distance above the back road was another fire road just at the base of the woods. Hog pens were usually constructed closer to the fire road.
Both the back road and the fire road had blackberry bushes growing next to them where other friends and I picked many buckets of blackberries in the summer. Our fingers would be purple from picking blackberries and, of course, our tongues would be purple from eating blackberries as we picked. My mother made wonderful blackberry cobbler and sometimes canned blackberries for later use. If we were lucky we could sell a bucket of blackberries to a neighbor for a buck or two to buy some candy, a toy, or fishing supplies at the company store.
In preparation for slaughtering hogs, 3 feet long tree trunks were cut which were about 2 inches thick. They were cut to a point on each end and nailed usually to the side of a wash house, a separate building which many homes in Berwind had. If the house had no wash house, the tree trunks were nailed against the outside of the coal box structure high enough to hang the hogs on them by their hind feet. The pointed end of the cut tree trunk was inserted just inside the tendon of the hind feet and the tendons were strong enough to hang the hogs by them.
A 50 gallon metal barrel was tilted at an angle so that it could still hold water and the hog could be slid into the barrel. The barrel would be filled with as much water as possible, and a fire was built under the barrel to heat the water.
When everything was ready and the water was very hot, the hog pen would be broken open and the hogs brought down near the barrel of hot water. The hogs were shot with a single shot rifle in the center of their forehead. When the hog fell, its throat would be cut with a butcher knife to drain the blood. The hog was put into the barrel of hot water and taken out, then all of the hair was scraped off the hog with knives. Not a hair was left anywhere on the hog's skin. The hog was then hung up by it's hind feet and gutted.
The entrails were usually put into a well sterilized round metal tub usually used for bathing, and washing clothes. There were two handles on opposite sides of the tub so the tub could be carried by two people. Every part of the hog was used and nothing was wasted. The intestines were "chitlins" and were also used for sausage casings. The liver, heart, kidneys and everything were eaten. Extra skin from cuts of meat was deep fried, salted, and eaten for snacks.
Chitlins required a great deal of work. They had to be thoroughly cleaned out, then every bit of fat cleaned out of them before boiling them for hours. They are considered very special, but can really stink up your house while cooking. Some people cook a potato or onion in them which supposedly takes out some of the smell. I have a friend from South Carolina whose mother cooks her chitlins out on her back porch in a crock pot. She somehow packages them and mails them to Leroy by UPS to California. When he receives them, they are still warm! This is hard to believe, but true.
The hog fat was boiled to get the lard which was used a lot in cooking. The residual that was left over from boiling the fat is called crackling. That was used to make crackling cornbread which was very tasty. Hog heads, feet and ears were boiled until done, then ground with a crank type grinder to make hog head cheese, a jelled sandwich type meat often eaten between crackers. Another name for hog head cheese was "souse meat." I even made hog head cheese after moving to California many years ago, and yes, hog heads are sold here even today. I attend a New Years Day party every year in which a large pig is cooked in the ground, including the head. The meat is very tasty!
In Berwind the family who raised the hogs usually kept most of the choice pieces of meat, and rightly so, like tender loin, chops, hams, etc. Everyone who helped slaughter the hogs was given some meat. Hams were salted and hung to cure. Sometimes hams were sugar cured as well. Slaughtering hogs required many hours of tedious work.
In slavery times, only the poorest cuts and throw away parts of the hog were given to the slaves, so they learned to cook that meat and make delicious food with it. As a result you have "soul food" today, which is a delicacy and much in demand. Vegetables, especially things like green beans and collard greens were always cooked with a piece of ham hock or other pork in them. Soups, white beans, pinto beans and limas were always seasoned with pork meat.
Hogs in Berwind were fed table scraps, fruit peelings and cores, potato, carrot and other vegetable peelings. They were also fed a mash which was mixed with water, and they were fed corn and corn cobs. Most of the stuff fed to hogs was called "slop," and the act of feeding hogs was called "slopping the hogs." People would say "I have to go slop the hogs."
Charlie Dues, a black resident in Old Town Berwind had a horse and a wagon which he constructed with car wheels on it. Charlie collected slop from many white and black Berwind residents to feed his hogs with. The slop was usually kept in a bucket outside each house where Charlie could easily get it and then dump it into a bucket on his cart. This was really recycling and ecology at its best, but no one knew those terms then like we do now. When Charlie slaughtered his hogs everyone who contributed table scraps and leftovers was given some of the hog meat for their effort. Hogs were usually fed twice a day; in the morning and in the evening. They would pretty much eat anything.
Our next door neighbors and relatives Willie and Martha Barton had hogs, and one day I was up to the hog pen at feeding time with some of the older boys. The hogs had been fed and someone mentioned that hogs would even eat coal, so they got some coal and put it in the trough and the hogs started crunching away eating the coal! I thought that was fascinating since coal was a pretty hard substance. I was very amazed that hogs could eat coal!
I told my neighbor friend Kay Bradford about it and Kay didn't believe it, so I got some coal from our coal box and took her to the hog pen to prove to her that hogs ate coal. She was amazed as well, when they started chewing the coal. Kay and I would take coal up to the hog pen every day and watch the hogs chew the coal. Soon after, the Bartons slaughtered their hogs. The chitlins were so black from the hogs eating coal every day that the chitlins had to be thrown away and could not be eaten. I heard years later about their having to throw the chitlins away, and don't think they ever knew what actually happened. Though this is a funny story now, I regret that Kay and I fed coal to those hogs not knowing the result of our actions.
When I was a very young kid about 4 years old, my parents raised hogs and slaughtered them. They couldn't finish cutting all of the meat and storing it etc. that evening, so they laid the meat out on newspaper on the dining table and on the dining room floor. My brother Jimmy and I slept on one side of the dining area and I was afraid of the meat in there. I would not go into that room alone, and I was afraid to sleep in there. I cried until my parents let me sleep in their room, which was as far away inside the house as I could get from that frightening hog meat! I was one greatly relieved kid when the meat was taken out of that room the next day.
Wherever you go in this world, when you realize it is hog killing time, think of our little town in West Virginia and the memories that have affected our lives forever.
FOR THE DISCRIMINATING TASTE
Moonshine/White Lightning - Cracklin Bread - Squirrel
Home Brew - Pig Feet - Rabbit
Chitlins - Pig Tail - Ground Hog
Neck Bones - Ox Tail - Pheasant
Collard Greens - Sweet Potato Pie - Wild Greens
Poke Salad - Pork Skins - Watercress
Rhubarb Pie - Fried okra - Mint Tea
Sassafras Tea - Fried Green Tomatoes
Souse Meat/Hog Head Cheese - Blackberry Cobbler
FISHING IN BERWIND By John A. Burnett Jr.
As a young boy growing up in Berwind one of my most favorite things to do was to fish. If my mother sent me to the company store to buy something, I had to cross the steel bridge over the creek to get to the store. I would look at the creek and imagine all the big fish I could catch out of it. I would stop on the bridge to look, on the way to the store, and when returning home. Sometimes I did not have fishing line or hooks and neither item was terribly expensive and could be purchased at the company store. Any tree branch could be used as a pole, and if I didn't have a sinker I would tie a small rock on the line which worked just as well. One of my favorite places to fish was from a large boulder on the creek bank just beyond the bridge next to the doctor's office. The water seemed deeper there and other people seemed to have good luck catching fish there. There was a dirt walkway above the creek bank with thick >wild grape vines growing in the trees next to the creek. A small path provided access down to the creek. Further along the walkway the creek made a wide turn to the right, and there was a footbridge over the creek which was a shortcut to New Town Bottom. Red earthworms were used for bait and could be dug for in areas where dishwater or wash water was frequently thrown or piped to. Night crawlers were also used and could be found in grassy areas in most people's yards and in the park like areas around the bank, big office, and post office. You had to look for night crawlers, of course, in the grass at night with a flashlight, and a fairly quick hand. Each worm had a hole that it lived in and you had to catch the worm before it retreated back into its hole which it was never fully out of. One could often catch two at a time if two night crawlers were mating. While extending from their individual holes they would be joined together. If grabbed at the place where they were joined, you had yourself two night crawlers. Night crawlers were much larger than red worms and therefore more difficult to keep on the hook. You usually had to tear them in half to put them on the fishhook. One of the best baits that fish went for in a big way, was crawfish meat. Everyone in Berwind called them "crawdads." Crawdads were plentiful in the clear water streams around the hollow in New Town and in Old Town. They were, however, more difficult to catch since they were very fast. They usually lived under rocks in the streams, and one usually had to get his feet wet to catch them. They were various sizes and the bigger they were, the faster they could escape! They always moved backward at lightening speed and their large pinchers were a deterrent. We never once thought about eating crawdads and today they are a delicacy in New Orleans and all over the US. They are sold at "Popeye Chicken" one block from where I presently live. Billy Griffin taught me, his younger brother Saint John, and nephew Boomer, a trick to get fish to bite every time. He would take chewing tobacco and put it in a jar with a small amount of water and mash it up into a liquid. Then you put your worm on the hook and dip it into the liquid. The fish went for it like crazy. The only thing was that kids our age could not always get chewing tobacco. There were two kinds that I knew of; one was flakes of tobacco which came in a cheerfully colored paper bag and was "Beechnut" brand, and the other was a rectangular hard plug of tobacco which my father chewed called "Day's Work." On rare occasions I could break off a small piece of daddy's tobacco if it was around, but that was not often. I never thought to try snuff, but that wasn't easy to come by either. Quite a number of women in Berwind used snuff, and the act was called "dipping snuff." They would put it in their bottom lip and hold it in their mouth. Periodically they had to spit, and sometimes a coffee can was kept around for that purpose. Miss June dipped snuff, and she would spit on the ground when we were fishing, usually where no one would be walking. In general, it was thought not to be a nice habit. On two separate occasions I tried chewing tobacco and dipping snuff and didn't know not to swallow them. Both times I became very ill, so it was a hard learned lesson, and well learned indeed! I had a good fishing buddy named Charlie Simms who taught me a lot about finding lead along the railroad track and how he and his dad used to melt lead to make sinkers. He told me that "there was a small charge type device that was put on the railroad track to let the engineer know when to stop the train when picking up loaded coal cars. It made a small pop like a firecracker when the train rolled over it, and the engineer then knew he had moved the train far enough to go back and pick up more coal cars." Part of the charge was made of lead and we would pick those up between the railroad tracks. The lead was pliable enough that we could hammer it with a rock and attach it to the fishing line as a sinker. Since I was black and Charlie was white, I never was allowed inside his house and he never was in our house, although I don't think my parents would have objected to his coming into our house. When I went to Charlie's house I would knock on the back door. If Charlie was not eating lunch or dinner or not on punishment for something, he would come outside. He was a very animated and energetic kid and always excited about what he was doing. My family lived on a row of houses behind the club house where the houses were situated on the crest of the mountain. There was lots of space underneath the houses with the back part against the hill and the front part resting on pilings made of mortar and stones. There were steps down to the front yard from the front porch, on which most families had a swing and other chairs. Charlie and I would dig for worms under our house and under the Bradford's house next door, so we always had plenty of bait. We kept the worms in empty tin cans partly filled with dirt and would take one worm out to bait our fishhook. Charlie would take me to his latest fishing spot, and I would take him to the latest one's that I knew about. Sometimes we caught fish and other times we didn't. If the fishing wasn't so good that day, we would skip rocks across the creek. We enjoyed going down to Rift to the area called the "Break Through," which had high cliffs on both sides, rapids, and huge boulders next to the water with flat rock areas on both sides. The water seemed to churn at the Break Through, and was so narrow and deep that one could almost jump across from one side to the other. Further down it became a wide expanse of calm water where two creeks melded into one. There was a high railroad trestle there which had to be traversed if you wanted to fish on the other side of the Break Through. South of the trestle was a bridge over the creek which all vehicles crossed en route to Berwind from War. Just upstream from the bridge was a large square cement platform which jutted out into the creek. It was a favorite fishing spot for many people including Charlie and me. In the area where the two creeks met we would sometimes find my great-uncle Frank Divens fishing. My Family members affectionately called him "Daddy Frank." Daddy Frank always had the latest fishing equipment complete with a rubber wading suit. He would be out in the water where Charlie and I could not go. He had all kinds of lures, expensive fishing rods and reels and a very fancy fly rod with a reel that had a lever on it that when pressed, retracted the line back onto its spool. He seemed to be an expert at casting lures and at fly casting. I had fantasies of growing up and some day owning the kind of fishing gear that Daddy Frank had. Sometimes Daddy Frank fished in the creek behind Kerr Grade School where he, Aunt Amanda, and their daughter Amanda Ruth, and later I also lived with them next to the school. At recess I would watch him fishing from the playground and wish I was out there fishing too. Periodically Daddy Frank would give me 50 cent to dig some fishing worms for him and I was excited to do it because it meant I could buy fishhooks or line with the money! Daddy Frank, his wife Aunt Amanda, and several of their friends would sometimes go to Cherokee Lake in Tennessee and come back with coolers full of fish that they caught there. Unfortunately I never got to go on any of those fishing trips. I often fished with Mrs. June Smith and Mrs. Roberta Graves. In Berwind, married or adult women were called Miss and their first name. To show respect it was usually Miss June or Miss Roberta. No one bothered to say Mrs. even though that was understood. By the time I was fishing with these ladies, I had a rod and reel of my own. We would go in the evening to fish and stay until after dark. we each had a Y shaped tree branch that had been cut to rest our fishing rods on. The bottom was cut to a point so that the stick could be easily stuck into the sand. The rod rested in the V portion of the stick with the back part of the rod resting on the sand behind. Oddly enough, Miss Roberta was afraid of earthworms but loved to fish. She would wear gloves to bait her hook, but many times Miss June or I would bait her hook so she could get her line back into the water quickly. We used flashlights after dark to see the line jerk when a fish tried to take the bait. The end of the rod would bounce up and down when a fish was caught on the line. The fishing reels had a tension setting which allowed the line to be pulled by a fish and the reel would make a loud zipping or fast clicking sound when the fish ran with the hook. It was very exciting to hear the reel make that sound and we would immediately grab the rod to set the hook, and you knew you usually had a fish on the line! We caught a lot of fish at night, and we each would have a stringer of fish in the water. Invariably a water moccasin would swim over toward our fish and that would be the abrupt end to our night fishing that evening! Everything would be packed up and we would leave immediately! One evening when I was fishing with Miss June on the creek bank behind the grandstand of Berwind Ball Diamond, I caught a black looking turtle which looked to be about 6 to 8 pounds. As soon as I got him on the shore, he got off the hook and headed for the water! Miss June grabbed him by the tail and flung him back further on shore, then she put him in a big bucket that she carried which he could not get out of. Since initially I had caught the turtle, Miss June cooked it and invited me out to her house to eat some of it. It was boiled like a stew, and the meat was very white and tender. It tasted like chicken to me. I have eaten turtle a number of times since and always enjoyed it. The type of fish that were caught in Berwind were Silver Sides; Suckers, which had a round looking mouth; Catfish; Bluegill; and occasionally a Small-mouth Bass. How these fish survived in the creek in Berwind I don't know because most of the time the creek was black with coal dust washed from coal at any number of coal mining operations upstream and including at Berwind. When the creek was flooded, the water was a muddy brown with all kinds of logs, branches, and other debris carried along in its current. It was always fascinating to see all the different stuff floating downstream. We felt fortunate living on the edge of the mountain rather than in the flat areas as there was no chance of our house getting flooded. I continued fishing as a teenager in Indianapolis, Indiana where we moved to, and later in California where I became partial to salt water fishing in the Pacific Ocean. The largest fish I ever caught was a 21 pound Halibut on a fishing boat out of Redondo Beach, CA near Los Angeles.
RAISING CHICKENS IN BERWIND By John A. Burnett Jr
When I was a young boy in Berwind, my mother Geneva Burnett, raised chickens. Our hen house was built by mother and two teenage neighbors June and William Edwards. Their nicknames were June Bug and Peter Bug respectively. They were the sons of Carlos and Lillie Edwards, and Lillie was my mother's best friend. We all lived in the row of houses on the edge of the mountain behind the Club House in New Town.
Mother usually ordered baby chicks from Sears and Roebuck and they were delivered to the Berwind Post Office. They were shipped in a cardboard container which had holes in it. 50 to 100 chicks were ordered at a time. Mother always ordered 100 chicks. They would always ship more chicks than you ordered because one or two of them would be dead on the bottom of the box when you received them. They would all huddle together in the box and if one of them fell down, it was trampled by the other chicks and would be as flat as a pancake. Usually other people had ordered baby chicks from Sears and Roebuck too, and when we would go to pick ours up from the post office we would hear all of the chick's peeping sounds behind the counter. A great percentage of the baby chicks ordered from Sears and Roebuck turned out to be roosters. Once the baby chicks were brought home they were kept in a metal container called a brooder which had light bulbs in it to keep the chicks warm at night, and there was a place for food and water as well.
When the chicks were large enough, they were put into the chicken yard where they would take on the habits of all chickens -- "Early to bed and early to rise." We raised many White Leghorns which had white feathers, Rhode Island Reds which had red feathers, and Domineckers which had black and white speckled feathers. White Leghorn hens lay white eggs, Rhode Island Reds lay brown eggs, and it wasn't until I went to the Los Angeles County fair about 15 years ago, that I realized Dominecker hens lay brown eggs also. I had never paid attention to that growing up in Berwind.
When roosters were mating with hens they would peck all of the hen's hind feathers off and would keep pecking them, so to prevent the continual pecking, mother would fit a device on the rooster's bill which had a metal flap and prevented the rooster from pecking outward at hens but allowed it to peck downward to eat and drink water.
After a hen lays an egg she immediately starts cackling, so you always knew which hen had just laid an egg. The chickens were kept in a wire fenced area when very young, but later were allowed to walk around in the yard. Some hens would build a nest outside the hen house in the bushes, and we would collect eggs from there as well. They never seemed to wander very far from the area of the hen house.
When a hen was ready to "set" and hatch eggs she would make a little clucking sound. Mother would then accumulate fertile eggs which could be found by holding the egg up to a light bulb. If the egg had a speck of blood inside it, it was fertile. Mother would place the eggs into the nest and the hen would set for 6 weeks until the chicks hatched.
All of the baby chicks knew who their mother hen was and would follow her around the yard as she made her distinctive clucking sound. This is one of the sounds that you never hear in the city, but I still remember it and would know it anywhere.
A few baby chicks were sometimes bought for children at Easter time. Their feathers were dyed various bright colors: yellow, red, green, purple or blue, and were sold in stores as special Easter pets. Ducks and rabbits were sold at that time too. When the chicks were put with the other chickens, usually some mother hen would take them as hers and raise that chick along with her own, I have even seen a mother hen take a motherless duckling and raise it with her chicks, but that was not in my mother's chicken yard.
Some years later, the practice of selling dyed baby chicks, ducks and rabbits fell into disfavor and was thought to be cruel since some children would choke them and do other horrible things to them, so I think it was eventually outlawed.
Speaking of horrible things; Occasionally our neighbors would get a new dog, usually a mongrel, which took pleasure in killing our chickens. Apparently my dad had an agreement with Mr Ocie Bradford next door that if their dog was coming over to our yard and killing our chickens, then my dad could kill the dog. I remember 2 occasions when my dad shot and killed the neighbor's dog in our yard, from the dining room window. If the dog was killing our chickens, that was the end of that dog!
It was very common for everyone to walk through each other's back yard to get to any house on the row. The Bradfords had a very mean rooster who would attack anyone walking through their yard. They had a rock wall behind their house and if the rooster was up there when you walked by he would fly down and try to spur you with his long sharp spurs and dangerous claws.
One day a bunch of us boys were going through the Bradford's yard. We had been up in the back road and had walked toward the rock wall to jump down and continue to our yard. The mean rooster was digging in the dirt down below the rock wall where large boulders were stacked one on top of another. One of the guys -- I think it was Bobby Faucett, picked up one of the boulders and dropped it on the rooster, and that was the end of him! The Bradfords never complained about it because that was one mean old Rhode Island Red rooster!
Our chickens were raised to eat so we would kill a few at a time when we wanted chicken. I used to help kill our chickens and we would wring their neck until it broke away from the body. A round metal bathtub would be turned upside down over the chicken to keep it from jumping all over the yard until it was dead. We would then dip the chicken in boiling hot water to make the feathers easy to remove. There would also be hair like feathers left on the chicken. We would light a piece of rolled up newspaper or paper bag on fire and burn those feathers off. Then the chicken would be gutted and washed thoroughly for cooking.
Sometimes on the weekend my dad would come home at night and go to the hen house and get several chickens to take for his drinking buddies to eat. The chickens were only half grown and mother would complain bitterly about it, but he would take them anyway. He would do the same thing again the next weekend!
When my mother was a young girl, her aunt asked if she could kill a chicken? She said yes Aunt Adelaide I can kill a chicken. So Aunt Adelaide told her to go catch one of the chickens and kill it. She had watched it being done and thought she could do it. She wrung and wrung the chicken's neck until the skin broke and pulled up over the chicken's head. The chicken was walking around the yard with the neck skin pulled up over its head and eyes. That was a sight to see! It was some time before she learned to kill a chicken properly.