Marshall McClung
Mitch Ford recently spoke of going to my old home place in the Atoah community to see the daffodils in bloom – which my mother Edrie Lovin McClung planted long before my arrival in 1944. Mitch married my niece Teresa and lives a short distance from the home place. To go there is one of his favorite walks. I go there too from time to time and let the old memories of living there return.
I think of the daffodils as “Flowers of Time,” due to the number of old home sites in the woods where they still bloom decades after any one has live there. Local folks may refer to daffodils, jonquils and narcissus as “Easter flowers,” since they once bloomed around Easter – but now bloom as early as February. They require little care, which may have been the reason for their popularity with housewives who had their hands full with a number of children and chores inside and outside the home.
Hoot Gibbs and I like to locate old home sites often deep in the woods with no visible trail leading to them. Some of them are on U.S. Forest Service maps, but many are not. Sometimes we are able to find their location on old land records. Other than those sources it is a “go look for it” trip.
When we get to the vicinity of where an old home site is supposed to be, there are certain clues we look for. If we see yellow daffodils blooming there we know we have found it. Another is a forsythia bush with its yellow blooms. This bush has several local names, such as yellow bell, yellow bush and Easter bush. Often, old home sites will have a black walnut tree growing nearby. Another clue is that likely there is a water source nearby.
Hoot and I are amazed at just how far back in the woods our early ancestors lived; especially considering the mode of transportation back then, which was mainly horseback, wagon, or walk. Some prime examples would be the John Denton family, which lived in the Joyce Kilmer Forest; the Abner Moody family; and the Denton family, who both lived in the Little Snowbird area. It was a two-day trip for the Moody family to go to Andrews for supplies: one day to get there, sleep in the wagon overnight and return the following day.
On occasion – after a story of our visit to an old home site has been in The Graham Star – a reader with a desire to go there too will approach Hoot and I will want to know what trail to take to get to it.
We tell them there is no trail and get a strange look. The next question is, “How did you get there then?,” followed by the reply, “Mostly on our hands and knees.”
This gets an even stranger look.
Marshall McClung is the historical columnist for The Graham Star. He can be reached via email, mcclungs@email.com.