Country Connections by James & Ellen Perry
Time marches on. Memories, like old pictures, fade. Family members and old friends die.
The homesteads and farms remembered from youth are torn down or divided and sold by their heirs. Subdivisions are encroaching on our beloved mountains and valleys and now encompass the beautiful lakes we once enjoyed. “Keep off” signs are popping up as developers buy up property and build houses on top of our scenic hills ruining our vistas and changing the mountain silhouettes forever.
Some people call it progress. I don’t. Our beautiful fall colors that I remember in my youth are no longer, because our large canopy trees such as the maples, ash, poplar and oaks have been cut and the best shipped offshore.
We have had animals re-introduced into our state by the TWRA and others. These include coyotes, cougars, lynx and bobcats. Our black bear population has increased to where bears are being seen in towns and highly populated areas today.
I know the wildlife officers I have talked with claim there are no cougars in East Tennessee today, but I have interviewed people that I believe are truthful and who tell me they have seen them in Union County recently.
The introduction of coyotes and the protection of hawks has led to a decline in rabbit, quail, grouse and wild turkey populations. They have also reduced the number of housecats and small dogs. By the way when have you heard a whippoorwill at night?
My advice to parents is don’t let your children roam and play in the woods unless you are with them and you have protection with you, and I don’t mean repellent spray. There has been numerous sightings of a cougar or cougars with eyewitnesses watching one take a calf and dragging it into the woods. A school bus driver and the kids on the bus saw a cougar stalking a deer in a pasture in the Hogskin community recently. These and other sightings are less than 10 miles from Maynardville.
Other animals introduced into East Tennessee are elk. Elk are large animals which eat a large variety of grasses, twigs, leaves and gardens. I hope elk do not leave the management areas and reproduce into herds throughout Tennessee. It has been reported they have already caused problems in upper Claiborne County.
Among fruits, nuts and flavorful plants that are disappearing are pawpaws. During my youth in September, you could walk the woods, creeks and branches along the edge of fields and find pawpaws in abundance. They were delicious when ripened on the trees.
Another disappearing nut is the chinquapin. During September it was a race to beat the squirrels and wild birds to the chinquapin bushes and fill your pockets with them. Chinquapins are about the size of a marble and cousins to the American chestnut that was wiped out by a blight during the 1920s and 1930s.
As I played and hunted the woods during the 1950s, I saw remnants of chestnut trees that had fallen after dying from the blight. I’ve seen dead chestnut trees that were five feet at the base. Chinquapin bushes will live for about 20 years and produce nuts for 15 years before dying from the chestnut fungus. When I was a youth, chinquapin bushes were everywhere.
Another tree was the juneberry that produced very good red berries. They ripened in late June and were very tasty. My brothers and I knew where all the juneberry trees were and at the right time we would climb the small trees, bend them over and enjoy some ripe juneberries. Today the juneberry is almost gone.
Another flavorful small woods plant was the teaberry. The taste was so appreciated that a chewing gum, Clark’s Teaberry gum was produced in the early 1900s. It is still produced today but made in Mexico. I would search the woods to find American teaberry patches and remember where they were located. You chewed the leaves to get that great flavor. The teaberry plants also produced a red berry which no one bothered because it contained a seed to produce more teaberry plants. Teaberry is getting hard to find because of loss of habitat.
Another very edible plant grew in the winter months and my family spent many days during January and February gathering the creasy greens in dormant tobacco, garden and corn fields. Creasy greens are loaded with vitamins A & C, plus they are very tasty cooked with bacon grease and served with southern cornbread, fried potatoes and soup beans. Creasy greens are a close cousin to watercress that is also loaded with good vitamins. Today you can buy creasy green seed to plant your own.
Talking about watercress, it is very plentiful being found in small streams and creeks but be careful because most of the creeks and brooks today are polluted by septic tanks, animal fecal matter and human garbage dumped into the creeks. Find a clean branch or creek and enjoy the best sandwich or burger with early water cress instead of lettuce.
Another disappearing local sport and food provider is fishing in the TVA lakes, rivers and creeks. As a boy in the spring, I could go down the hill from my parents’ farm to Norris Lake with half a dozen artificial flies like Doll Thompson’s Doll Flies and bring back all the fish I wanted to carry home.
In the hot months I could dig worms, put them in a Prince Albert tobacco can and bring home all the panfish we needed. Today you can’t catch many panfish and other fish species because they are not there in sufficient numbers. I know that impoundments go through changes as they age but most of the disappearances or lowering of the number of fish species goes back to the introduction of the striped saltwater bass that sometimes grow in fresh water to 50 lbs. The local fishermen were told by officials that stripes didn’t eat game fish but fed on shad. Well in the lakes of North Georgia the bait shops sell 6-inch to 8-inch rainbow trout for striper bait. How about that?
Will East Tennessee ever go back to an agriculture base? No! Will the American chestnut ever be as plentiful and grow to the size of yesteryear? No! Will the TVA lakes go back to where families can enjoy the lakes with simple times without being told to leave or being bothered by jet skis and boats that travel 80 mph on the water? No!
Will we in our lifetime see laws passed in Tennessee preventing the destruction of our mountains so someone with the means can have “a view” by flattening mountains tops to build a house? (Check New York’s state laws enforced by the New York EPA.) Will we in our lifetime be able to see our mountains in fall put on a beautiful color show originally designed by our supreme God? Let’s hope!
Will we see our creeks and rivers cleaned up and kept pristine for our future Tennesseans? I hope!
Let’s hope that old fashioned Tennessee common sense returns and we can preserve what few good qualities we had handed to us by our ancestors who endured and left us a treasure called Tennessee.
At Rose Hill Elementary School we were taught to sing this by Mr. Harold Julian at our 4-H meetings "Oh Tennessee, fair Tennessee the land of all the world to me. I stand upon a mountain high and hold communion with the sky and view the glorious landscape o’er old Tennessee forever more.”