Cades Cove memories: Former residents, descendants relive history

By Kelly Weaver-Hayes
Daily Times Correspondent

Citing what her mother used to say to her, "whistling girl and a crowing hen will always come to some bad end," Catherine Gregory Shults related to a large crowd of former Cades Cove residents and their descendants a little bit of what it was like to live and work in the cove as a youngster.

Shults was one of a panel of six former residents chosen by the the Cades Cove Preservation Association to sit for questions by association president and cove descendant Dave Post Sunday afternoon at the Valley View Lodge in Townsend.

The association worked for weeks before sending out 152 invitations to surviving family members of the close-knit community, whose land was bought out by the National Park Service in 1934, according to Ruth Caughron Davis, in charge of public relations for the group and a descendant herself.

In all, 242 people signed the registry for the gathering which opened with a prayer led by Minister Jim Cooper.

Those in attendance passed a microphone and were given the opportunity to stand, introduce themselves, and tell a little something about their relation to the cove.

Turning 95 in May, Nancy Garland Myers Webb, who lived on the Garland Place, told of shaking the snow off the covers in the morning to make sure you didn't come back to wet covers that evening from the day's thaw.

As the microphone passed to Bernard Myers, he told of his little trick he played in first grade when he asked his teacher if he could be in his friend Bob Coada's class. Coada was in second grade, and the teacher thought Myers meant to be in Coada's class just for the day. But that's not what he meant. But she agreed. So when he went to school the next year in Townsend, he went right on into third grade, he said.

Myers took the crowd from laughter to more sobering thoughts as he reminded them how his father died from a heart attack in April 1945 when he went to plow his friend John Tipton's garden.

"We made it somehow, with God's help. Mom always managed to put something on the table," he said, noting that living on a farm, good neighbors and cousins were a great help, too.

Among the last family to leave Cades Cove were two sisters, Rebecca Renfro, who left in 1994 when she married, and Amy Hudson, who left in 1986 when she went to college. They are both descendants of Lois and Kermit Caughron.

Having lived at three locations in the cove, Judy Myers Johns said her family's last move was to be able to get electricity. Her parents, Verna Lee Burchfield Myers and Hugh Myers still work in the cove everyday at the stables. Johns' mother took her to the Primitive Baptist Church, she recalled, for a foot washing. "Scared me to death 'cause my feet were dirty," she laughed.

Panel members were asked to recall what their homeplace was like when they stepped out on the front porch. Almost all of them said they had a dirt front yard, with no grass, unless the yard was the field where they worked. Living in a house below the Cable Mill, Faye Coada Johnson said her family swept their dirt yard and kept it clean.

J.C. McCaulley told of two humongous white rocks in the field where he spent many hours playing. His father built a frame house up the hill from their log home, but he didn't complete it, he said. The boards on the front porch were loose, and in this case, the front yard, "if you could call it that," was on a 45 degree angle, he chuckled. The bee shed was just below the house, and he had to keep away from it, because the bees didn't like him, he finished.

Small as a young girl, and a finicky eater by her own admission, Shults (Cat to her cousins) was one of two girls in her family with seven brothers. She said they were petted and the boys carried them around. But her brother, Carl had to grab her one day on the way to school to keep the wind from carrying her away, she said.

The home of Odis Clinton Abbott was near the Primitive Baptist Church, he said. A road used to run to the house about a quarter of a mile, where he said he learned to drive a car, but where now, there are trees as big as his arm.

Most of the families of the panelists said their houses were made up of three or four rooms. Abbott's house was no different, he said, with a room in the back with two or three beds in it. As for sleeping arrangements, "We just piled up and went to sleep," he said.

The Abbott family grew apple trees and a garden in the little valley in front of their house, he said. They also had milk cows, chickens and would grow a hog, he said.

Out the front door of Leland Sparks' home growing up, he said, was often a team of draft horses. He and his brother had the job of cleaning up after them, as well as hauling hay out to the cattle and their one or two horses, and watering the hogs.

"Being the tallest one, I was always accused of sloshing water over on my brother," he laughed.

Feather beds were an apparent luxury for the boys in the Shults family, according to Shults, who watched her mother pluck goose feathers to make those beds. She said her brothers told her how they dreaded going up to cold beds at night, but that "feather beds warmed up in no time."

Some of the fondest memories of the life in the cove, Shults said, were after supper when her mother would teach the children to sing. Abbott, who is her cousin, said he remembered that the four boys could sing all four parts of a quartet and did it well.

One of Abbott's fondest memories is of munching on fresh teaberry leaves. "I got that teaberry flavor in my throat and my mouth and I enjoyed it," he said, smiling with a nod.

Asked about their favorite foods from those days, panelists mentioned pan-fried potatoes, Sunday dinner after church, cornbread and potatoes, and even cornbread and milk. McCaulley's favorite was banana pudding or coconut cake, he said. "Banana pudding; that's what I wanted for Christmas," he remembered.

A trip to town was looked forward to by kids in Cades Cove "as much as kids do Christmas now," he said. Kids were usually left at home for the three or four-time per year trip to town.

McCaulley's father took him to Baker's Boarding House, where they served meals family style on long tables. "I never had any iced tea 'til I went there. I thought that was the greatest thing," he recalled.

Parents took their goods to town and would trade for shoes or whatever the family needed. Shultz said her father would take a load of apples for the three-day trip to Maryville. The people would grab up the apples and eat them, she said. "They wouldn't last." Before he left, he always made a foot print of each child to buy their shoes.

The Myers family has a treasured family photo from her fondly remembered trip to Maryville to Webb Studio, according to Bonnie Myers.

Possibly the largest showing for a family was eight of the 12 Sparks children (Amy and Asa Sparks) who attended. All 12 of the Sparks siblings are still living, according to Lennis Sparks Walvoort.

Families were invited for coffee and fried pies following the gathering, which ended with a 1975 recording from the Missionary Baptist Church featuring some of the Tipton family singing "'Til We Meet Again."