Chapter Five
“THERE'S GOTTA BE
SOMETHING TO IT”
Marybird McAllister:
When you see a turkey buzzard flyin' you look at him and ask him questions and if he flops his wings it's gonna come so and if he don't, he'll sail off. It's the truth. I've asked him things since I been here and ever' one of 'em come so. Say, hey, little lonesome turkey buzzard, I'm gonna do so and so, or whatever you want to ask him, and it's gonna come so, he'll flop his wings. He'll sail off floppin' 'em and if it ain't, it'll just sail off and won't pay no more 'tention to you or nothin'.
Hilma Yates and Lloyd Powell:
We used to think that all this stuff was so that Marybird would tell because we thought that people that were older than we were when we were children we always thought it must be so. She used to say if she would go out in the yard -- she had a sister, Lucy, when they were young and they had boyfriends they wanted to come see 'em and she'd say, "Turkey buzzard, turkey buzzard, if my true love's comin'," says, "flop your wings." Says, "If he's not, just fly away." And said that turkey buzzard, if her sweetheart was comin', why, the old buzzard would flop his wings and then say if he wasn't comin', why he'd turn and fly away. She'd say, "Well, they won't be here today, but we'll try 'em again next time." And they always told their fortunes with the turkey buzzards.
She'd always have so many superstitions. She'd say, "My nose itches for a woman." "My nose itches for a man," she'd say. "If it itches on the end, they're comin' a-ridin'." She said, "The right side itches for a man; the left side itches for a woman." And then if the rooster would come to the door and crow with his head in, she said, "Somebody's comin'. You watch and see. Somebody'll be here 'fore the day's gone." Well, always happened that somebody did come. Well, of course, I don't know whether Ma'ybird's rooster brought 'em or whether they was just comin' anyway. And then when any of her people or anybody would come, she'd say, "Oh, I know'd you was comin'. My nose was itchin' for you." And she always had a sign. Ev'rything that happened it was a sign that she had. Well, if the rooster would come to the door and his head would be in toward the door, there was company always comin' before the day was gone. If he would come and turn around like he was goin' out back from the door, where there was somebody goin' out. She always said, "Well, bad luck, somebody's goin' out" - either to the hospital or goin' to die.
And she had a bunch of sayings about dropping silverware, didn't she? Yea. Well, she said if you drop a knife a man was comin'. Said you drop a fork a woman was comin'. You drop a spoon you gonna have a disappointment.
She always said it was bad luck if you hear a cow lowin' at night out in the field. It would scare her to death. She said this cow would low out in the field, unless the cow had a calf you know or unless you'd sold a calf then that didn't amount to anything, but just a ordinary cow lowin' in the field in the night, why it was awful bad luck. Sump'n awful bad was gonna happen. And most always it did.
Well, she'd go to bed every night and if she would sneeze after she went to bed, she'd say, "Well, there's gonna be more or less here tomorrow night." Somebody's gonna come in or somebody's gonna be gone. She said, "When we would always sneeze at night" said, "the next night Ma or Pa would be gone away from home." We never did like to sneeze after we went to bed 'cause we knowed Ma or Pa one was gonna be gone the next night. Didn't want them to leave. That was a true sign.
When the roosters would go to roost a-crowin' of a night, if they went to roost -- if you hear 'em crowin' after they went to roost, if you go in the henhouse where they were and you put your hand on their feet, and if their feet was warm why it was gonna be rain or fallin' weather, but if their feet was cold, there was gonna be a death in the family. That was one thing that they could always tell about the weather.
I've often heard 'em say that when rats would be in the house and lots of times whenever you hear the rats over the ceiling you know, you'd hear 'em in the house runnin' around, they'd say, "Well, it's gonna be windy weather. It's gonna be cold. Hear them rats runnin'? It's gonna be a cold spell." And then they had another sayin'. They used to see pigs and things runnin' around in the lot and the pigs would chase one another, run around in the field. "Well, the pigs is runnin' down there, it's gonna be windy." That's the way they could tell about the windy weather. And lot of old people, they were superstitious about goin' anywhere and startin' and fergittin' sump'n and go back after it. They would say it was bad luck to go back and they said that you'd have to stop and make a cross. I've seen so many old people, they'd take a switch or a stick or somethin' and they make a cross and then they say they spit in it. Make a cross mark in the road if they had to turn to go back for sump'n that they had forgotten and they'd say that was for good luck. And if you went back and didn't make a wish, why they'd say you's gonna have bad luck. I've known it to be the case lots of times that people'd be goin' in the car goin' somewhere and they'd have a flat tire or sump'n, "I told you if you hadn't a went back you wouldn't a had that bad luck." Sometimes maybe when they's in the horse and buggy days why maybe the horse'd git scared or run away or somethin' or somethin' would break. They always were superstitious about that.
And they always had another saying, the first whippoorwill? you hear that spring if you're standin' up when you first hear it, you'll be well and hardy to hear the next one, and if you're settin' down when you hear the first one, you'll be sick and if you're layin' stretched out in the bed, you'll be dead when the first one calls next year.
They tell me when you hear the first dove holler that spring of the year, if he's hollerin' behind you and you're in front of him, you'll always keep your work ahead of you that year, but if you hear him in front of you, then you'll always be behind in your work that year.
Robert Shiflett:
Whenever a hen would crow or try to crow, boy, whenever that happened, ev'rybody stopped rakin' no matter what you was doin' or where they was at, but if you couldn't kill it, you went and got somebody to kill that hen right then. I never did know why they done it. I don't know as I ever heard 'em say what their belief was, what they thought was gonna happen if you kept that hen, but I know that hen died right then and they didn't eat her. They had a sayin' that went:
A whistlin' woman and a crowin' hen
Always comes to some bad end.
If a hen should crow it would surely bring bad luck if you didn't kill the chicken. A hen does crow. I've heard it and my mother never did like to hear a hen crow and no old people ever did. They said it was pretty surely a sign of bad news. And we have a yellow bee they call a stranger bee. Whenever one follows you out, that was another superstition. You may be sure of hasty news of some kind. And if a chicken should crow at night after he goes to roost, I don't mean in the early mornin' now, I mean before midnight or thereabouts, there would be hasty news and usually bad news. I don't know what makes chickens crow at night, but I have heard 'em many, many times. Well, sometimes you'll git hasty news of one kind or another. Well, if it should so happen, that clinched the belief in that, you know, and naturally handed on down.
Mary Shiflett:
Yea. Hen crows, it's bad luck. They said you should chop the head off of a hen. My grandfather had one down there, hen was always crowin' and Uncle George used to say, "Pap, you better kill that old hen." Says, "Bad luck for a hen to crow." "No, that's my favorite hen." Said, "I ain't gonna kill my hen." And she just kept on a-crowin', kept on a-crowin'. So one night 'bout two o'clock in the mornin' the henhouse that this old hen roosted in caught afire and burned down, and I reckon it musta burned the old hen up in it, I don't know. But she's givin' 'em warnin', I guess, that sump'n was gonna happen. Nobody never did know how the henhouse ever caught afire and burned down.
Mervin Sandridge:
We used to have kerosene lamps. If you was just settin' and the lamp chimney cracked a certain way, they'd always say there's gonna be a death in the family. Many times a lamp chimney's crack, and it wouldn't be just a week or ten days somebody in the family would die. I used to always just dread to think about it, you know. Be settin' at night 'fore you go to bed and just happen to look at the lamp, you know, think, "Supposin' that thing would crack; sombody's gonna die." Then they used to say if you'd cut a new window in a house, that somebody in the family would die. They wouldn't do that. If you built a house and the door wasn't in the right place, or the window wasn't in the right place, you didn't cut no more, not while you were livin' there. If you move out, then somebody else before they moved in could go ahead and do that. But they really believed in them two things.
Robert Shiflett:
No man would never in early times allow his gun to shoot a cat. It ruint the gun, you know. The gun would never be any more good for nothin' else if you shot a cat with it. Some would git more reckless than others and go ahead and shoot a cat, but it seemed the gun never would shoot right no more.
And then, of course, there were various so-called cures, magic cures for this and that. I couldn't tell you that I recognized the thing, but I could tell you what they look like. There used to be an old man they called him Dr. Dyor, a negro -- a so-called wizard that lived over at Port Republic somewhere. My father knew him. And so when anything went wrong and you's havin' bad luck at home, a lot of these people crossed the mountain to see this wizard. He'd tell them what to do. The things he give some of'em -- I saw one once. It looked like a dried up walnut sewed up in a little dirty bag.
Hilma Yates:
Marybird said they used to when they got sick that her daddy always used garlic. That's somethin' that smells like onions. I don't know what it is, but she said that her daddy always kept that and camphor gum. They used to keep it always tied around their neck. Whenever they'd ever get a cold or anything would ever happen, they'd tie this garlic in a little bag and put it around their neck. Her mother was named Polly Ann, and said ev'ry time one of'em would git the sniffles or git a cold or any disease or anything you git around the country, she'd always say, Pap would say, "Polly Ann, git the garlic and tie it around their necks and keep the disease off. "
Lloyd Powell:
Always when they planted cucumbers if they planted 'em when the sign was in the flower they'd be all blooms. There wouldn't be no cucumbers; they'd be just all blooms and there wouldn't be no cucumbers on 'em.
Just buy an almanac every year. Yea, we get one every year. Use the almanac sometime when we go to plant, we go see what the sign's in. The sign man in almanac will tell you when the sign is in the flower. Ev'ry muscle on the man there's a arrow points to it and it means somethin'. There's a man in there that's called the sign man and there's a sign for ev'rything. Some's in the flower, and some's in the other signs. We always planted the beans when the sign was in the twins and that'd make a whole lotta beans. If you planted anything when the sign was in the lion, it'd always be strong.
Well, we used to, when we planted potatoes, we generally planted 'em when the sign was in the leg or thigh. It'd make a big potato. We didn't plant 'em when the sign was in the foot 'cause it'd always have little bitty 'tatoes hanging 'round the potato, like toes.
Sometimes they used to kill hogs. If they killed 'em when the sign was in the fish, the meat always taste like fish. Well, we always killed pigs on the full of the moon. That meant when they put the meat in the skillet that it stretched out and kept the skillet full. That was on the full of the moon, and when it was dark and old of the moon, the meat drawed up. Wait till the last part of the moon, you know, the meat would draw up when you put it in the skillet to cook it. Shrivel up.
Well, there's the old belief that you can go and cut down a piece of timber. You can cut pine wood. You know what pine is? Well, you can cut pine trees on light nights, that's when the moon shines all night, you know, cut 'em on light nights; well, then, when you go to get that wood up, it's just as light as can be. And if you cut it on dark nights, it never hardly dries and is just as heavy as it was, might' near when you cut it -- when you go to haul it in.
Got to cult poles for drawbars. Used to have gates that used have drawbars. And you cut poles for them, you'd cut 'em on the light nights, and when you'd get them poles, they'd be light. Then they'd be always heavy just might' near's when you'd cut 'em. If you plant potatoes or anything when the moon points up, when they come up and made their self, they'd all be up mighty near to the top of the ground. And if the moon pointed down they'd always stay in the ground.
I wanted 'em down in the ground so plant with the moon pointing down. Always stayed in the ground 'cause get up on top where the sun burn 'em and the chickens peck 'em. Plant anything on a light night then you'd have a light crop. Plant it on dark nights, you'd have a heavy crop.
You know when the nights'd be dark be that you'd come up here at night and can't see how to walk, ain't no moon shinin'. Well, you plant in the day, then at night it'd be dark. That'd be what you call dark nights.
Mervin Sandridge:
Well, a lot of people still go by the signs. They go by signs plantin' stuff now. They git all the signs from the almanac. Go by the moon. Changes of the moon -- full moon, dark nights, light nights. Well, corn and stuff like that they plant on light nights. They claim it gits taller. I don't know. I never did believe too much in that.
They used to make bows and shingles, which that was all they had back then -- and nobody able to buy a metal roof then. I've made many a bow and shingle. Yea. You had certain moon signs that you cut the bow tree to make bows, shingles. Then they had a certain time they put 'em on. They claim when you put 'em on, I believe, on dark nights that they'd lay down -- they'd lay down flat. You put 'em on light nights, they claim the ends would turn up. I don't know. You can go by a barn or a house, sump'n that had 'em on 'em, you see 'em had the end of 'em turn up. Then you go by another one and they're layin' down flat. They'd always say, "Now that roof right yonder was put on the wrong sign." They used to build rail fences -- that's the only thing they had to build a fence out of -- and they'd always build them on light nights. They claimed they'd stay up out of the ground. If they put 'em on dark nights, they claimed that bottom rail would go on in the ground and that'n'd rot, then the next one would go on down and that'n'd rot and keep on. I never did pay no 'tention to 'em. I mean I done things when I got ready to do 'em.
I've planted both times and I never did see no difference in 'em. But the most foolish thing I ever heard was they used to always tell me -- used to hear 'em say, "Well, go see about the cows. Got a cow supposed to be fresh. Moon changed last night or this mornin', cow'll be fresh." They do the same thing over there right now. Yea. They sent me one time. Told him, said, "He was gonna see about that cow." Some said, "Moon ain't changed yet." He went up there; the cow done had the calf. Yea. The cow didn't know how to read the signs.
One thing -- I don't know what it is -- but you can cut down a tree -- specially a pine -- you can cut it down on a certain time, it'll just dry, git just as light as a feather, and again you can cut that thing down, by God, and it'll just git heavier and wetter and soggy. They always claimed before the dark nights when the moon is on the whole quarter. The new moon's mostly when they cut and dry. Moon's in the west, they always claim. I always thought it was sump'n maybe in the air or the sap but they'd do it by the moon.
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