Country Life
Local resident Nancy Henderson has seen life come and go in our area for quite a few years. She also has a great knack for storytelling and we’ll be sharing some of her short essays here from time to time in a new series of Country Life vignettes (and can we just say that we love both of the definitions of that word at right?!).
Her stories were originally published in the Quebec News column of The Transylvania Times.
________________________________________________
Do you have stories like these to tell? We’d love to hear from you so we can share them with our readers! Just complete the form here and we’ll get back to you about a potential future feature in this column.
Cemetery
I remember in the early ‘50s when Oak Grove cemetery was a very unkempt cemetery. There were small trees, briars and some families had family plots fenced in.
A large group of men from the Quebec Community decided to clean it up and make it look orderly.
After a Saturday of working all day, my dad, Roy O’Dell, came home and told a very interesting story.
It seems after the cleanup got underway, they decided the graves needed to be in a straight row.
They proceeded to move the tombstones or rocks as some were used for markers, to a straight row.
I verified this memory with a 91-year-old member of our community. Her husband was one of the cleanup group.
In fact, I was told a couple of years ago while digging a new grave the diggers dug into a box.
Respect for the dead is what counts.
How Word Got Around
Thinking back to the 1950s, I thought, ‘How did word get around?’ Whether it was a tragedy, an event, gossip or just everyday talk, word got around.
People would walk to their neighbors for a visit. McCall’s and Wilson’s stores were gathering places. Both stores had benches and chairs on the covered porches. Anytime during the day, you would always find someone sitting on the porches drinking soft drinks, eating a candy bar, and smoking cigarettes. I loved to sit and listen to adult conversation. Wilson’s Store stayed open late in the evenings. After dinner, the men in the community would go set on the porch or in the winter stand around the woodstove inside and pass along the latest community news.
If you were real lucky and needed to get word to someone that was ahead of you on the mail route, our carrier, Mr. Thomas, was kind enough to deliver your letter that day. All you had to do was mark same-day delivery on the envelope.
In the early 1960s, telephone lines started to be run up Quebec Mountain. Everyone was so excited – telephones were coming to Quebec and Lake Toxaway. In the fall of 1962 people were able to start applying for service in our area. The options were a private line, a two-party line, a four-party line, or a 10-party line.
The only person I knew who had a private line was our neighbor. She applied for the 10-party line. She was the only one who did, so she had a private line. Wise woman. Word got around real fast after that. In the early 1970s all lines were made private.
Newspapers were a rare thing in the 1950s. The Transylvania Times came in the mail once a week and was shared with many families. Social media now makes it possible for word to get around immediately.
If I think about the porch talks at our community stores, I miss the practice of drinking that 5-cent soft drink, eating that 5-cent candy bar, and listening to the community news.
I sure don’t miss the cigarette smoke.
Having A Cow
In the 1950s in Quebec, families owned a milk cow. Milk cows had to be milked twice a day. After the morning milking, the cows were herded to pasture to graze all day. Late afternoon around 6 some cows would head back to the barn and some had to be herded to the barn. 
Milking took place again. The milk was carried to the house in pails and strained through cheesecloth into a gallon jar that was then placed either in a spring box or a refrigerator to cool.
Once the milk was cool, the cream would rise to the top of the jar. Cream was removed and put in a gallon jar to sour to be made into butter in a churn. All us kids loved to churn and see the butter flakes come up on the dasher handle. The dasher got harder and harder to churn and the butter was formed. The butter was scooped out and placed into 1-pound molds. My grandma O’Dell’s butter mold had a pineapple stamp. What was left in the churn was buttermilk. The best whipping cream also came from the cream of the real milk. All these were byproducts of real milk. People who did not have cows bought milk, butter, and buttermilk from people who did own cows. It was a thriving business. It was a way of life long gone.
