| Summary: | A book of collected essays on life in the Appalachian mountains, created by the English Eleven students of Pikeville College, circa 1927. at the next house raising we see the same bridegroom working with such spirit as the others did on his house. COUNTRY FIRE SIDE IN WINTER By Vesta Powell Chimneys were usually built at one end of the house just heating one room, but occasionally they were built up through the middle of it, so as too heat wee Two rooms. They are built from rock which has been cut into shape so as to fit one on another, and between each rock is a lay- er of mud which helps to hold them together. The fire place was a large open space in the wall. In the back of the fire place was a big ornamented slab of cast iron which was to protect the back of the fire place and was called the fire back. by the middle of the seventeenth century fire backs of very elaborate type were being made. There were fire backs representing the crucifiction of Christ, the death of Jacoby, and many others. Then there was the firedog. Two of these irons were always used, one on each side of the fireplace. They have an upright standard to which is attached a horizontal bar which raises the logs above the hearth level. The base gives the support and appearance of the dog, and that is how it gets it’s name. COFFEE GRINDING By Cretie Coleman In the days of our grandmothers and mothers things were not so convei- nent as we find them today, especially coffee grinding. The doffee was brought green and had to be roasted before grinding; This may seem strange to you all since today we buy coffee ready for the pot. There may be some one who never saw a coffee mill hence I will tell you about one, we now happen to have. It has a little machine inside, there is a crank which turns this, called “burrs”, as well as I remember, my mother told me the name of it. If the mill grinds too coarse there is a little lever on the top of the mill to regulate the fineness of the ground coffee. LOG ROLLING By Eugene Hale This happens not to be political “Log Rolling” but is an ancient cus- tom of getting timber out of the mountains, and taking it to the mill to be sawed into valuable lumber. Log rolling was considered hard work and to perform this task, mennhad to be tough, and strong. It was also dangerous as well as strenuous work. The logs had to be rolled and guided down the rough hillsides, the way they could best be taken to the mill. The men used ox and horses to pull the logs around the hill to to a selected spot where the logs would slide. Often times horses would get killed or perhaps a leg broken or sometimes men would meet the same accident. The log rollers used what is termed as hand spikes to handle the logs. Sometimes when the men were ordered by their boss to work late on Sat- urday, the men would get angry and purposefully set their hand spike a log that had been caught foul, and by giving a quick jerk the hand spike would break into. Then they would continue to do this until all the hand spikes were broken. This is the method the workers used when they wanted to quit on Saturday afternoons. A well-known minister whom I know personally, related me this story a- bout log rolling. About thirty-five or forty years ago John Marshall was rolling logs on the head of small fork of Left Beaver Creek. The hand spike he used was a home-made one. He labored with this oak hand- spike all day and at the close of the days work he jabbed the green handspike down into a decayed stump. The next year he passed near this spot and the handspike was growing. Forty years later he went back and the handspike had grown into a huge oag, almost four feet in diameter. He took a picture of the tree and later held a meeting in its honor. The tree is still standing and is known by all as the “John Marshall Handspike Tree.”
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