Building items used on the farm – and in logging, in an earlier time – have become a hobby for Buster Stewart.
After retirement, Stewart began building sleds and yokes; items used on the farm and in the woods.
The runners for the sleds were usually made from the sourwood tree which tended to have a natural curve for the front of the runner. I recall when we lived on our mountainside farm on Atoah we used our sled to gather corn and haul burley tobacco down to Atoah Road when it was time to sell it. There was no road that a truck could travel to our home then. Buster recalled a bobsled they had built being used by his father Tillman “Til” Stewart in the 1950’s, to haul hemlock bark out of the woods in the Hayes Flats section of Big Santeetlah Creek to the truck road where it was loaded onto George Long’s truck. The woods crew that worked on collecting the bark included Lincoln Long, Homer Phillips and Lester Stewart.
The bark was then hauled to Milltown, where it was loaded into a box car. The pay was $1 for 100 pounds of bark. Buster recalled a team of roan horses they had bought from Lee Waldroup on Anderson Creek.
Buster has built six of the sleds, which are smaller than those used
in earlier days. In addition to the sleds, Buster has built 10 yokes, which were used on oxen and steers. Oxen or steers were used instead of horses in the early days of Graham County. They were slower than horses but could pull heavy loads.
People probably weren’t in such a big hurry as we are today and were probably a lot less stressed than us “modern folks.”
Marshall McClung is the historical columnist for The Graham Star. He can be reached via email, mcclungs@email.com.