In most parts of this country “living close to the land” and “making do” are catch phrases often reflected in the raucous sentimentality of modern country music. Hank Williams’ “A Country Boy Can Survive” is but one example:

The preacher man says it’s the end of time.

and the Mississippi River she’s a going dry.

The interest is up and the stock markets down

and you only get mugged if you go downtown.

I live back in the woods you see,

my woman, and the kids and the dogs and me.

I got a shotgun and a rifle and a four wheel drive

and a country boy can survive. Country folks can survive.

I can plow a field all day long,

I can catch catfish from dusk till dawn.

Make our own whiskey and our own smoke too

ain’t too many things these boys can’t do.

We grow good old tomatoes and homemade wine

and a country boy can survive, country folk can survive.”



Well, Hank senior could have survived, maybe, but junior couldn’t. Wearing designer blue jeans and singing loud doesn’t make one competent when it comes to “making do.” The Foxfire books, which I do enjoy, and designer cabins are other modern species of this sort of “fotched-on” nostalgia.

In our area of the Smokies, however, “making do” is not a lost art. Most “country” men and women can indeed “make do.” This, of course, is because most grew up doing so. Here folks are not so very far removed from their pioneer ancestors. Even when a hardship, this is a blessing. Here the “make do” days, which lasted on mountain farms (not the cities) until about the middle of the 20th century, aren’t ancient history.

When writing Our Southern Highlanders (1913), Horace Kephart recalled the years (1904-1907) when he resided on the Little Fork of the Sugar Fork of Hazel Creek in the Smokies: “In our primitive community there were no trades, no professions. Every man was his own farmer, blacksmith, gunsmith, carpenter, cobbler, miller, tinker. Someone in his family, or a near neighbor, served him as barber and dentist, and would make him a coffin when he died.”

There are two books in which the authors describe very clearly the “make do” lifestyles of the mountain past. The first is by Duane Oliver, now a Hazelwood resident, who grew up on Hazel Creek. His Hazel Creek From Then Til Now (1989) is a gem. I especially enjoy re-reading from time to time his chapter titled “Won’t You Stay for Supper? We’re Having Leatherbritches, Corn Pone, Bear Meat, Gritted Bread, Poke Sallit and Sourwood Honey.’ “I Believe I Will, I’m Partial to Poke Salit.’”

Surely that heading is one of the finest ever contrived in the annals of mountain literature? Duane commences the chapter with a paean to mountain women: “The pioneer women of Hazel Creek had her hands full. Some of her activities, such as hoeing, picking berries, gathering nuts and herbs, and drying and pickling, were seasonal. Other chores such as laundering, soap making, carding, spinning, weaving, dyeing, sewing, cooking, raising the children and helping to educate them before schools were started, and dozens of othe jobs, were done all year. Of course, as soon as the children, especially the girls, grew up she had a little help from them until they got married.”

The other excellent source for this sort of information is John Preston Arthur’s Western North Carolina — A History From 1730 to 1913 (1913). Preston, a resident of Asheville and Boone, was a former attorney turned writer who became too well acquainted with John Barley and ended his life digging potatoes and gathering apples for 50 cents a day. Nevertheless, he was a superb local historian. Let’s close out this little ode to “making do” with a few of his observations as recorded in a chapter titled “Manners and Customs.”

Under the heading “JACKS OF ALL TRADES,” Arthur notes that “The men were necessarily ‘handy’ men at almost every trade known at that day. They made shoes, bullets and powder, built houses, constructed tables, chairs, cupboards, harness, saddles, bridles, buckets, barrels, and plough stocks. They made their own axe and hoe-handles, fashioned their own horseshoes and nails upon the anvil, burnt wood charcoal, made wagon tires, bolts, nuts and everything that was needed about the farm. Some could even make rifles, including the locks, and Mr. John C. Smathers now (1912) 86 years old, is still a good rock and brick mason, carpenter, shoemaker, tinner, painter, blacksmith, plumber, harness and saddle maker, candle maker, farmer, hunter, store-keeper, bee raiser, glazier, butcher, fruit grower, hotel-keeper, merchant, physician, poulterer, lawyer, rail-splitter, politician, cook, school master, gardener, Bible scholar and stable man. He lives at Turnpike, halfway between Asheville and Waynesville, and brought the huge trees now growing in front of his hotel on his shoulders when they were saplings and planted them where they now stand, nearly seventy years ago. He can still run a foot race and ‘throw’ most men in a wrestle ‘catch as catch can.’ He is the finest example of the old time pioneer now alive.”

Under the heading “NAIL-LESS HOUSES” we are told: “Nails were scarce in those days and saw mills few and far between, rendering it necessary for them to use wooden pins to hold their ceiling and shelving in place and to rive out their shingles or ‘boards’ for their roof covering and puncheons for their door and window shutters and their flooring. Thin boards or shingles were held in position upon the roof rafters by long split logs tied upon them with hickory withes, or held in place by laying heavy stones upon them. There is still standing in the Smoky mountains a comfortable cabin of one large room, floored and ceiled on the inside, and rain and wind proof, in the construction of which not a single nail was used. This cabin was built in 1859 and is on the Mill Creek Fork of Noland Creek in Swain county.”

Arthur goes on from there to describe how worn sled runners were “shod” by tacking splint saplings under them, how boards were made by “cracking” a log, and many other things related to the “make do” genre; that is, the real thing, not the modern nostalgic versions.

George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C. 28713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com