Friends of Southern WV I hope you can receive and will enjoy this short story taken from my own experiences of growing up in a rural area in southern WV, which is intended to present our region as it existed in the early thirties and forties. Please respond if you like my approach and would like to see more occasionally. Some mailing list administrators are hesitant to allow these narrative inputs. Turkey Creek, Wyoming County My family left Coon Branch, West Virginia, for a short time in the early thirties and moved to the mouth of Turkey Creek on the Guyandotte across the road from where the town of Marrianna now stands. The road down main Turkey Creek connects with the road down Coon Branch and Mother occasionally took my brother, Gene, and sister, Augusta, and me up Turkey Creek and across the mountain to visit my grandparents on Coon Branch. We made the trip on foot except one time when Grandpa John picked us up in his Model-T Ford. The trip could easily be made in a day, even with three small children, but my mother stretched it out for a couple of days so that she could visit along the way. Now, in retrospect, I often consider that, because we were extremely poor, it was one of my mother’s ways of obtaining something for us to eat. We wound up Turkey Creek by the large farm and magnificent home of John Ball and then past the Turkey Creek Church. My Browning and Cook ancestors were charter members of the congregation that started that church. Our first stop was at the home of Uncle Walter R. and Aunt Minnie Cook. Aunt Minnie was my Grandma Martha Browning’s sister. Uncle Walter’s boys Sid and Dale were favorite relatives of my father and I especially liked them because they showed me a lot of attention. They were frequent guests at our house. They would stop in for coffee, a drink of water or just plain conversation as they walked off Turkey Creek on their way to somewhere else. Roscoe , who was older, visited our home at the mouth of Turkey after his corn was “laid by,” when he and his boys took time off from farming to visit their favorite fishing hole on the Guyan. One of our visits to Uncle Walter’s that stands out in my memory was during apple-harvesting time. The Walter R. Cook household was alive with activity ”working up” the apple crop. It was customary for neighbors to help each other on special workdays such as this so there was an unusual number of people present. Beyond the pleasure provided by this opportunity to meet friends and neighbors, people of the community depended upon each other. They knew they would be repaid in kind when they had a need for extra “hands.” My mother pitched in while my siblings and I joined the other children there for games and kid’s mischief. Later that day neighbors would be seen leaving for home after a hard days work bearing a sampling of the goods they had helped to produce. The ladies and girls were peeling and coring apples and everybody was involved in making cider, apple butter, “fruit” and jelly. (“Fruit” was a generic name for canned apples that often resembled what we commonly would call applesauce today.) Bushels of various types of apples were spread out on the porch and hundreds of yellow jackets crawled and/or circled over them. Different types of apples were best for different types of apple products and little was wasted, Rotting apples were not discarded; the rotting portion was simply removed and the remainder of the apple went into one or the other of the pots. Even the apple peelings were cooked, strained and further cooked to make jelly. They made apple butter in a huge copper kettle with a large hinged steel handle. The kettle and ingredients sat in a special steel frame over a large open fire, which had to be maintained religiously throughout the long operation. It took a long time for the apples to be converted into apple butter and they would easily stick to the container if not stirred continually. Stirring was accomplished with a long-handled, L-shaped paddle with several large holes through the blade. The business end of the device had been stained to a distinctive reddish-brown color from many hours of contact with hot apple mixtures of the past. Apple butter production was labor intensive. Cider was the best of all the products. Old Timers knew which apples produced good cider. Fortunately, cider could be made from small or “blemished’ apples, if they were of a variety that produced the right taste. Although the apples did not have to be flawless they could not contain any evidence of mold or spoilage. First, the apples had to be peeled, trimmed of any bad spots and washed. Next, they were crushed into pulp; I don’t recall how and can only guess at the procedure. Finally, the juice was extracted from the pulp in a press made especially for that purpose. It was common in that day for a farmer fortunate enough to own special implements, such as a cider press, to share it with neighbors who were not so fortunate. Of course, at this stage, Uncle Walter’s cider was only apple juice, called “sweet cider,” but we kids pretended it was the real stuff ("hard cider") as we feigned drunkenness and reeled about the premises. Nonetheless, we found it to be delicious, and there was plenty to go around. Some of the juice would be made into hard cider by allowing it to ferment naturally and age before use. This final step is very critical to get the right product and not vinegar, I have no idea of the details involved. Later on in the season, different kinds of apples would ripen on this and other local farms often resulting in different uses for the fruit. Apples from sweet-apple trees didn’t “cook up good” and were made into preserves. Other apples were peeled, cored and cut into wedges, which were strung on a cord and hung out in the sun until they were dry and ready for storage for use later on. Lots of people didn’t bother with stringing the wedges, preferring, instead, to spread them on the roofs of their houses to dry. Some varieties were good “eatin apples” and would be wrapped in paper and stored in the cool, hillside cellars or a deep hole in the ground so that the family could enjoy fresh apples far into the winter. >

Stanley, I enjoyed reading about the apple butter making. I have had the occasion to make apple butter. A women from my church, (deceased now) would have the women and men of our church do an apple butter stir every October. This year I was unable to get the people involved. It is a very time consuming and laborious job, but I thoroughly enjoy every minute of it. The most precious is the time spent with friends. My kids have also had the pleasure of stirring the apple butter, so they know what it is like. I don't think they would call it a pleasure though. Jane in Lorain OH