Stories & Recollections of Etowah . . .
as told by  ~  Opal Dalton Parkinson

1924 - 2016, Etowah Native
Gladiolas and Cattle on Judd Wilson Mountain

The last time I was able to walk and get up to the Judd Wilson house, it was still standing.  Somebody kindly fixed it up.  Some kids had gone in there one time and vandalized it, and they got it fixed back up.  Some of the family, we'd go for a walk or something like that.  My daddy owned a big place back up above there and he use to keep cattle in the summer time up there.  And of course they had to go in the spring and go around and check the fence where they couldn't get out.  We would run them by hand up the mountain and put them in the pasture.  Usually on a Sunday afternoon she'd (mother) take us or we'd go with him just to walk up on the mountain to check on the cattle and see if they is OK.  We walked Judd Wilson Mountain to have something to do.  Looked for bird nests a lot.  Hoot owls, whippoorwills.  You don't see the bats now and they use to be just in flocks.  My father's name was Eli Jerome Dalton, and he was raised in the Edneyville section of the County. 
 
They just always said "Judd Wilson Mountain" cause that was the only house up there at that time.  Judd Wilson farmed a little bit and made a garden.  I knew they growed gladiolas.  We had the first car, a touring car, and it was kind of like a truck and it had seats in the back on each side, and canvas.  You could roll it up and buckle it up.  My mother (Harriet Allison Dalton) always took butter and eggs and anything she had to sell to the boarding houses in Hendersonville on Saturdays.  Everybody was out and wanted to go to town and would want to go with them on Saturday.  And he (Judd) raised gladiolas.  He had the prettiest gladiolas and he always wanted to go to town to sell his gladiolas.  They had one boy and his name was Robert.  He married Lois Blythe.  Her father was a preacher, Carl Blythe (pronounced "Bly").  He pastor'd just about every church in Henderson  County.  Judd's wife's name was Sue [Susan Fletcher].  [Note:  The Wilson family is buried in the Thomas-Fletcher Cemetery.]
Picture
Tom Orr (1939-2021), beloved HHS educator, local history author and community leader, visiting Opal in her home, September 2015.
'Tuft' Whiteside's Filling Station was the only filling station where you got gas.  I know for the principal at school, they'd (the kids) would always go over there to get a co-cola at recess time.  R. W. Jones was the principal at the school.  This is sometime in the  early 1930s. It was mostly a filling station and he just kept kind of like snacks.  You didn't buy like a sack of flour or sugar or anything like that.  It was just snacks and drinks and I'd get moon pies.  They had them way back when and still have them today, the chocolate moon pie.   That was the snack and a co-cola.
Post Office at Recess  -  We kids always had to go to the post office, and get permission [from the principal] to go and get the mail at dinner recess time.  It was an hour.  And then come back to school and bring the mail home.  Because if we wasn't in school, some of us had to walk to Etowah to get the mail every day.  They called it dinner recess.  They didn't call it lunch back then. 

School was always a special place cause you had friends.  Of course, they always wanted to come home with us from school cause we had a big place to play.  My daddy had us working too and we had plenty to do when we got home.  If we brought a kid with us, they worked too.  Down there in the bottom it's  flat.  All the kids liked to come from church on Sunday cause my mother always cooked a big pot of this and that.  There was always plenty to eat here.  And there's a big place to play ball and, of course, there's a big family of us, and all the kids liked to come and have a ball team.  And we did play in the river, the F B R.  And you know if we'd stepped in a hole, we'd have been gone.  But you know nobody never drowned.  
Little Willow Creek  -  I was baptized over there where the creek runs into the French Broad River over here at the bridge. Little Willow Creek.  They'd wade out so far and the Deacon would go out there with the Pastor in case something I reckon happened.  They'd catch ya.   
A Passing & the Bell  -  Every church had a bell in it and they'd tole it if somebody died in Pleasant Grove, Big Willow, Etowah, Blantyre. They'd ring the bell as many times as his age.  And everybody knew that somebody was sick, and they knew that somebody had died. They say they still have that bell upstairs some place (in the Etowah Baptist  Church).
Making Butter  -  Mother had several different kinds of butter churns.  She had the dasher that went up and down.  It had cross pieces inside.  That beat the milk down.  Then she had one that you turn with a wheel.  It was metal.  And then she had one that was wood and it turned around and around.  And you'd churn about every day or every other day for a family.  We had several cows and milk.  Here's one thing about it.  If you ever learn how to milk, you'll never forget how.  We always had to milk at night and sometimes in the morning before we went to school.  And working, we had to get up before daylight and get ready to go to work when the sun come up.  When daylight came, you was out there.  Mother would just call your name to wake us up in the morning.  And it took all of us, I guess, to really make it.  
On the Etowah Grange  -  They built a cannery down from where the gym is at (Etowah Elementary gym). For metal cans.  You could take corn that was hard for anybody to keep if they canned it  in jars.  And you could take whatever you got and go up there.  And Jimmy Cantrell kindly managed it.
Watch Opal Dalton Parkinson's
Oral History

Collected and preserved in 2013 by the
Mountain Elder Wisdom Project of the 
Center for Cultural Preservation, Hendersonville NC

Courtesy of
www.saveculture.org
David Weintraub, Executive Director