Gnats in the 'Bacce Patch: And Other Tales from Dumplin’ Valley

By John W. Lee

Farm work? Well, if youre a teenage boy who grew up in the big city, in the mid 60s, its an experience. There are stories to tell and characters to meet. Hosey Camp, Mouse, Uncle Millard, and others had an impact that was not always predictable on an impressionable, nave kid from Atlanta, Georgia.

Those days are gone. They dont farm like that no more. The family farm, to a great extent, has been replaced by mega cooperatives. But the memories remain, the tales last, and the characters (if they still exist) are hard to find.

Yes, the tales are truewell, mostly true. The characters are real and Dumplin Valley is a real place. Gnats in the Bacce Patch is a whimsical, and humorous glance at lessons learned and life experienced by a teenage kid over 50 years ago.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524614799

John W. Lee

John W. Lee is a retired executive who lives with his wife in Wears Valley, near Knoxville, Tennessee.

Book preview

Gnats in the ‘Bacce Patch

And Other Tales from Dumplin’ Valley

John W. Lee

36625.png

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2016 John W. Lee. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/28/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-1480-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-1479-9 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

A Note From the Author

Down on the Farm, Up on the Farm

Hosey and the Pig

The Church in the Vale

Gnats in the ’Bacce Patch

Millard and Bill

Somethin’ About a Mule

A Snort With The Boys

Over To Millard’s Store

They Don’t Farm Like That No More

About the Author

Tales From Dumplin’ Valley

A Note From the Author

The answer to your first question is, yes. Dumplin’ Valley is a real place. It’s located in east Tennessee, approximately thirty miles from Knoxville, near Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Dumplin’ Valley is a community of rolling green hills (mostly farmland) in an area of a state that has been blessed with great scenic beauty.

The answer to your next question is, yes. The stories that follow are true. They occurred in the summer months between 1962 and 1967 and are told from the perspective and through the eyes of a teenage city boy who spent summers working on his uncle’s farm.

Yes, the characters are real, although in some cases, they are composites of more than one individual. Uncle Eustes, for example, (pronounced Yous-tes) is such a composite. In such cases, the sum of the components equate to personalities that influenced a young man with a certain amount of humor and what is sometimes referred to as country wisdom.

I am allowing myself a certain amount of literary license and creativity. The events described occurred over forty years ago and are recollections as best I remember them from the perspective of a young man in his teens.

Finally, I am reminded of the TV series, Dragnet, that was produced by the late Jack Webb in the ‘50’s and later in the ‘60’s. Each episode was preceded by the following statement from the narrator. The following stories that you are about to see are true. The names and the places have been changed to protect the innocent.

Such is the case with Tales From Dumplin’ Valley. Enjoy!

John Lee

Sevierville, TN 2013

Down on the Farm, Up on the Farm

Down on the farm, we always ate what was put in front of us.

Up on the farm, we didn’t have a school bus to ride. We either walked, or rode the mule when Pop would let us.

Now stop crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about. Back on the farm, Pop would take a razor strop to me when I was bad.

Down on the farm, up on the farm, and occasionally, back on the farm. I heard that kind of stuff over and over again as I was growing up. My Dad was raised on a farm southwest of Atlanta, in Douglasville, GA. My Grandfather, on my mother’s side, was raised on farm near Dumplin’ Valley, Tennessee. The farm in Georgia was a small, subsistence type of farm that existed primarily to feed my dad, his brother and six sisters.

My dad, the youngest of the bunch, grew up and went off to college at the University of Georgia on a football scholarship, right about the time that World War II was getting underway. It was around that time that the farm was sold and, as such, ceased to exist.

But the farm in Tennessee? Well, that was a big farm that prospered in agriculturally rich East Tennessee well into the 2000’s before being parceled off and sold to developers.

Down on the farm, we didn’t have any TV. We had chores to do up until sundown. Then, it was dinner, Bible readn’, and bed.

Between my Dad and my Grandfather, I heard this kind of stuff over and over, again and again. Eventually, me and my sisters began to refer to such sayings as "farmisms". As we got older, we would poke fun at such sayings by preempting a statement or comment with, I know, I know… down on the farm you did it that way.

My Grandfather had sold his interest in the Tennessee farm to his brother, my Great Uncle Eustes. We frequently visited the farm as little kids. I remember holding my grandfather’s hand as he took us to see the chickens, then the pigs and the cows along with other farm critters. We would frolic in the hayloft and play on their big John Deere tractors. It was fun, but more importantly, it exposed us to a way of life that could not be found in suburban Atlanta.

It was during my teen years that playing on the farm evolved into working on the farm. I raked and bailed