When Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov composed the orchestral interlude “Flight of the Bumble Bee” around 1899-1900, he couldn’t have known that it would one day relate to some young boys growing up on Atoah Creek in Graham County.
One of our “woodland adventures” was throwing rocks at hornet and yellow jacket nests. Yellow jackets that built in the ground were whipped out with tree branches such as pine tops.
This sometimes resulted in stings.
My brother Sam McClung and Gerald Phillips – who lived across Atoah Road from us – discovered a bumble bee nest in an old dead pine snag. My father – Clyde McClung – advised them to leave the bumble bees alone, or they would chase them forever. The warning went unheeded, as they pushed the snag over and broke the run, while I stood at a safe distance uphill. Nikolai would have been proud of the “flight” of bumble bees that took place. The air turned black as a swarm of bumble bees emerged.
Too bad there wasn’t an orchestra assembled there.
There was a lot of noise however, as the bumble bees overtook the boys down the mountainside and laid multiple stings on them. My brother said it felt like someone was hitting them with rocks. I think bumble bee nests in the area were safe after that.
Some other crazy events that some of the rest of us Atoah boys engaged in was to shoot rocks straight up in the air with our sling shots under some large trees. We would stand perfectly still (you were chicken if you moved). This either took a lot of nerve or stupidity, as we heard the rocks coming back down along with twigs and leaves.
Now that I am older, I think it was the latter.
Another, even more dangerous one that Billy Corbin, Jack Gregory, I and others did was to go to a mountain top on a windy day, climb to the very top of a white pine or hemlock tree and let the wind sway us. If the wind wasn’t blowing hard enough to suit us, we would rock the tree top back and forth ourselves.
Little did we know that this was two species of trees that could easily snap in strong winds.
We might not have had much then, but we did have a lot of fun, and no doubt worked our guardian angels overtime.
Marshall McClung is a historical columnist for The Graham Star.