| Summary: | (4:16) Carol Jean Holland Grisham talks about life on the banks of the Tennessee River. This interview was conducted as part of a joint project of the Music Preservation Society and the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library. This project focus was oral history interviews with area residents who had lived or worked on the Tennessee River.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Carol Jean Holland Grisham
March 4 2008
Cherokee, Alabama
Conducted by Freda Dailey
Clip 3
Freda Dailey: Okay. Do you remember anything that had to do with music or any kind of people camping on the river or incursions you had with people?
Carol Grisham: Our camp down there was rather isolated. It’s not now. It’s what they call the rock quarry, is where it was. It was pretty secluded, but there was always somebody coming in, especially after they did a road around through behind Rivermont and down through there. There was no road. Let’s see, the McGuires had a dairy up, out, let’s see, I don’t know what the name of that road is now. But that was the end of the road there and then they built a new road on around that went into the back side of Rivermont.
FD: I’m picturing like Walker’s camp back in there. Is that where
CG: Walkers camp is where is it.
FD: Okay.
CG: Right in there.
FD: Okay.
CG: Fact is, the Walkers didn’t have a camp down there until they built a road down there. We camped down there long, long and the property where Daddy lived till he passed away TVA auctioned it off. And the Walkers wanted all that back there and they knew that Daddy was going to, Daddy was going to run it up really to get it if he had to because that’s where we all were raised in the summer time. They came to Daddy and told him that if he wouldn’t bid on it they would let him have that spot right there and that’s what happened. Daddy got the place right there on where he had always camped. And we camped where my granddaddy when he was a little bitty boy helped put those rocks in that circle. And they did it with a mule and a pulley whatever you call it you know. It went round and round and round and they, those things are in a circle and they weigh tons, tons, tons, tons. And they’re hard. But they were going to use them in the dam. That’s what they were put up there up for. And that’s, it’s very interesting. And we’ve been in every credit
FD: Stumped your toe on every rock down there as the old saying goes?
CG: Oh, yeah. They’ve made a mess out of the front part of it. Really, because I know of three different companies that came and tried to cut those stone up. Because it looks like that they make wonderful building stones. But they’re so hard they haven’t found anything yet that was economical enough for them to cut and do a profit. It takes too long. But they’ve defaced several of them.
FD: I keep wanting to go back to see, I know they’re interested in music. And I, but we don’t know anybody, anything that had to do with music down there.
CG: No, there used to be a group, of just Mother and Daddy’s friends that would come down there and they’d do mandolin and guitars and all that. And then we could hear the music from the boats. They’d have music on the boats that went up and down the river.
FD: You said something a while ago about a paddle wheeler. I know there was regular routes of those though that came from in Kentucky way back . We’re taking 1890s and you know way back, when I interviewed people long ago. Did you see any of that kind of thing? Of paddle wheelers?
CG: Every now and again we would see those. But I’m talking about the what do you call them? They pushed barges up and down.
FD: Tug boats
CG: Yeah, the tug boats. And some of them had the wheels, the big wheels behind them and they’d make great big humongous waves. Those were quite common back in the forties, late thirties and forties.
|
|---|
