The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky, and Other Kentucky ArticlesAllen, James Lane
General
The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky, and Other Kentucky Articles
Allen, James Lane
Kentucky -- Description and travel; Kentucky -- Social life and customs
The grain is ground at their homes in a hand tub-mill, or one made by
setting the nether millstone in a bee-gum, or by cutting a hole in a
puncheon-log and sinking the stone into it. There are, however, other
kinds of mills: the primitive little water-mill, which may be
considered almost characteristic of this region; in a few places
improved water-mills, and small steam-mills. It is the country
of mills, farm-houses being furnished with one as with coffee-pot or
spinning-wheel. A simpler way of preparing corn for bread than by even
the hand-mill is used in the late summer and early autumn, while the
grain is too hard for eating as roasting-ears, and too soft to be ground
in a mill. On a board is tacked a piece of tin through which holes have
been punched from the under side, and over this tin the ears are rubbed,
producing a coarse meal, of which "gritted bread" is made. Much pleasure
and much health they get from their "gritted bread," which is sweet and
wholesome for a hungry man.
Where civilization has touched on the highways and the few improved
mills have been erected, one may see women going to mill with their
scant sacks of grain, riding on a jack, a jennet, or a bridled ox. But
this is not so bad as in North Carolina, where, Europa like, they ride
on bulls.
Aside from such occupations, the men have nothing to do--a little work
in the spring, and nine months' rest. They love to meet at the country
groceries and cross-roads, to shoot matches for beef, turkeys, or
liquor, and to gamble. There is with them a sort of annual succession
of amusements. In its season they have the rage for pitching horseshoes,
the richer ones using dollar pieces. In consequence of their abundant
leisure, the loneliness of the mountains, and their bravery and vigor,
quarrels are frequent and feuds deadly. Personal enmities soon serve to
array entire families in an attitude of implacable hostility; and in the
course of time relatives and friends take sides, and a war of
extermination ensues. The special origins of these feuds are various:
blood heated and temper lost under the influence of "moonshine;"
reporting the places and manufacturers of this; local politics; the
survival of resentments engendered during the Civil War. These, together
with all causes that lie in the passions of the human heart and spring
from the constitution of all human society, often make the remote and
insulated life of these people turbulent, reckless, and distressing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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