Tag: Dag Grady

The Ku Klux Klan

I liked Fred Grady. He had been a hard working man in his day,  hauling logs out of the woods with a wagon and a team of mules.

Fred was the father of Brother Pop’s best friend, Dag, and he came to Snowbird, in the mountains of North Carolina, with the two of them a good many times. Fred would arrive carrying a shotgun in one hand and a poke in the other. He traveled light.

Brother Pop and Fred Grady, at Snowbird
Brother Pop and Fred Grady, at Snowbird

He was too old to do much more than look after the fire but he worked at that. Back when we slept in a three-sided shed he would stay up all night when it was real cold, feeding the pot bellied stove and keeping the rest of us reasonably warm.

And then one day he got to talking about the Ku Klux Klan, and how Klansmen did a lot of good and this, that and other. I try to be nice to company on Snowbird no matter what, but I couldn’t let that pass.

“Fred,” I said, “the Ku Klux Klan is worthless. They’re just a bunch of ignorant, racist cowards.”

And I added, “The Klan has never done anything good.”

Fred said that won’t so, the Klan had so done some good things.

And I said, “Name one, Fred.”

And he said, OK.

There was this white man who worked at the sawmill where Fred worked, he said. The man would get paid on Friday night and go to drinking and whatnot and by Monday morning he’d be nearly broke. His kids went hungry a lot.  Sometimes they didn’t even have shoes to wear. He beat his wife, too. Every once in a while she’d show up in town with a black eye or a busted lip or both.

All of this was brought to the Klan’s attention, Fred said, and one night they paid that fellow a visit. They drug him out of his house, tied him to a tree, and whipped him.

And then, Fred said, the Klansmen explained how things were going to be from then on: He wasn’t going to drink any more.  He was going to start giving money to his wife so she could buy food.  Shoes, too. He wasn’t going to hit her any more either, no more black eyes and busted lips.  Fred said they told him if they had to come back to see him they were going to wrap a chain around him and throw him in the river.

And you know what? the old man said. That fellow straightened right up.  Quit drinking.  Started feeding his kids. Quit hitting his wife.

That’s one good thing the Klan did, Fred said.

Coming Friday: The Trade Secret

The Germ Inspector

The original skunkhouse.
The original skunk house.

For years we camped in the mountains of North Carolina, at Snowbird, in a three-sided shed, with a potbelly stove in the back and three racks on each side. On cold nights we hung a tarp across the front.

The skunk house, after Pop closed in the front and added a kitchen.
The skunk house, after Pop closed in the front and added a kitchen.

After a while Brother Pop and his friend, Dag Grady, and some others closed in the front, built an annex to the shed — a kitchen — and lugged a cast iron stove up there, a little over half a mile. Pop became the camp cook, a job he held for years.

“Eat it or wear it,” he would say.

We took turns doing dishes in a creek not far off. We did the best we could to keep stuff clean, but with no running water in the shed, that won’t easy.

If you came to Snowbird in those days most people understood that you had to lower your standards a little. If you didn’t think a fork or a plate was clean enough you just wiped it on your shirt and went on about your business.

But everybody didn’t always get the message. On one trip to the mountain there was this guy who was constantly on the lookout for germs, and Pop got a little tired of it.

Pop: "Eat it or wear it."
Pop: “Eat it or wear it.”

My brother often bought venison to the mountain which he mixed with anything and everything, trying to get rid of it, I guess. One morning he made biscuits from scratch and he mixed tiny bits of venison into the dough.

A few minutes later the Germ Inspector came into his kitchen and stood there, watching. Pop took a spatula, picked a small piece of venison out of the dough, and flicked it onto the dirt floor. And then another one. And another, and then, almost under his breath, he said, “Damn rats!”

The Germ Inspector heard him, and the rest of us got to share a couple of extra biscuits that morning.

Coming Friday: What’s That Thing We Used To Do?