My grandpa lived right over the mountain [from here]. After he married, he came down to the Macedonia district. I can remember my grandfather well, even though I was only ten years old when he died. He was a good man. If you didn't get him mad at you, he was the best feller in the world. He'd pet me just like a baby. "Come on here," he'd say, "Now, Adam, I want you to go home with me. I want to give you somethin'."

"All right, I'll go." I was just a little feller.

I'd go home with him, and he'd give me a can of salmon fish. He bought 'em by the case. Back then, they didn't cost much. He'd buy great big boxes of 'em at a time, and he'd give me a can of 'em everytime I went home with him. He wanted me just to walk with him over there. He was a good old man and everybody liked him. He raised a big family.

He caught a bear one time and raised it. He caught the bear out in the mountains somewhere. It was small when he got it. Well, he kept it around there and made him a scaffold up in a big pine tree in the front yard. He made that scaffold for that bear to climb up and lay on. That suited the bear. He put a chain on him, and let him go up there and sleep. So, he raised that bear up around there and he got to where he'd turn it loose. It'd go anywhere around there. So, finally it went back out in the field, and some of the neighbors shot it. They didnt know it was his. Or somebody come through and shot it.

Grandpa was a big, stout, long-armed man. He didnt care. He'd catch a bear as quick as he'd catch a groundhog. There used to be a big mill dam right over the hill, there. And his dogs got after a deer. They run it into this mill dam. It was a big old buck deer and it was a fightin' his dogs, 'bout to drown 'em. And, of course, Grandpa was stout, and he just pulled off his coat and into that dam he went, to where the deer was. And them dogs was tryin' to catch it in the water there. But it was about to drown them, and he just reached in and got them big horns and put it under the water and held it 'til it drowned. He was a big stout man. Bigger than I am. Longer armed.

Back in that day, people kept 'em a little drink of liquor. He had a cellar up there in his barn in the hallway. Everybody knowed where it was. And he kept a ten-gallon keg of liquor in there. He wouldn't get drunk or nothin like that. He'd just drink it. Once or twice a day, he'd take him a drink of that liquor. So, some of my kin got into it way back yonder. They got drunk on that liquor. They got in there and drunk outa that keg and it made 'em drunk. It was one of my brothers and one of my cousins that lived out here. And they got so drunk they couldnt' walk, and my granddaddy found out they'd been into it, but Grandfather didnt do nothin to 'em. He just let 'em go. Then they got sober. He took care of 'em. He had to. They was just plumb drunk. They was about twelve years old.

Grandpa was mostly a farmer and a blacksmith. He had a blacksmith shop as long as he was able to do anything. He could make anything. Make a wagon, horseshoes; he'd make them. He could make anything he wanted to make. Everybody knowed Grandpa. He had sixteen kids.

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