As you might guess, the subject of rocks comes up often at our house since Chitter is a lapidary artist (cuts, grinds, and polishes rocks).
There’s many things I wish I could tell Pap, but right there at the top of the list is to tell him Chitter sells rocks that come from the creek 🙂 I can just see the twinkle in his eyes and hear the laughter of his voice.
Paul wrote a song about a little heart of stone. You can go here to give it a listen.
Since the girls were young they’ve collected heart rocks. Chatter and Austin used rocks in their wedding as favors to give the guests.
My Papaw Wade used rocks to make marbles when he was a boy you can read about it here.
Rocks played a role in Pap’s childhood play too, but in a very different manner.
rock
B verb
1 To throw rocks at in order to intimidate or to drive away or back, esp to ambush a rival in courtship on the latter’s way home from seeing a girl. Hence rocking = the action of driving an intruding boy away; rock a house = to warn or intimidate the inhabitants of a house by throwing rocks at it; rock back home = to drive cattle home by throwing rocks at them.
1913 Kephart Our Sthn High 259 A prime amusement of the small boys is “rocking” (throwing stones at marks or at each other), in which rather doubtful pastime they become singularly expert. 1939 Hall Coll. Nine Mile Creek TN He’d run a bear in on them, and they got to rocking it. (Fonze Cable) 1953 Hall Coll. Deep Creek NC [The bull] belonged to old man Collins. I told him if he tackled me I would have to shoot him…I tried rockin’ him to keep him off me. (Fate Wiggins) 1970 Hall Witchlore 32 Incidentally, “rocking” (that is throwing rocks at) was mentioned in two tales as the treatment for cows thought to be boogers or ghosts. 1985 Pittman Comm Centr 140 [I]t was an often practice that the visiting male was “rocked” on his way back home after a visit to his girl’s home. 1986 Sevier Settler 8:25 “Rocking” people was a practice that was done on Halloween and throughout the year. If a fellow was walking his girl friend home from church, and if his friends knew which route he would be taking, the fellow’s friends might hide in the bushes until the couple came along. Then someone would yell, “Pick’em up,” and his friends would throw a handful of rocks at the couple. The rocks were never meant to harm the couple, they were only meant as a teasing joke….
Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English
Pap told me tales of boys rocking each other for fun when he was young. It never sounded like much fun to me. But I could see by the glint in Pap’s eye “rocking” was big fun for a boy growing up in the mountains of Appalachia.
If you’ve been following along with my reading of The Thread That Runs So True you’ll remember rocking was used to scare off Jesse’s friend when he was walking the school teacher home after dark.
After we moved to Wilson Holler my brother Steve was throwing rocks and accidentally hit me. I cried a lot but there was no real injury. He got in big trouble with Pap and I always felt bad about it because I knew he couldn’t see me through the trees and didn’t mean to hit me.
When the girls were really little, maybe four years old, I had them helping me out in the backyard where I was trying to clear rocks off an area. Chatter accidentally hit Chitter at close range. In just a few seconds a big purple pumpknot was raised up on her ankle and let me tell you there was lots of crying. Chitter was in pain and Chatter was sorry for hitting her.
As I watch videos of damage from Helene I’m shocked by the amount of rocks that have been unearthed and tumbled about by the rushing water. Folks from various areas say the terrain has been permanently changed.
Please continue to remember the victims of the storms and the workers in your prayers.
Last night’s video: Granny’s too Scared to go in the Woods – Last Q&A – More Old Photos.
Tipper
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It must be so strange and disorienting to have a land you’ve known be suddenly and permanently changed. And to think that 50 years from now, there will be a generation of people who don’t know it any differently. Makes me wonder what the land I look at and think I know now, looked like 100 years ago and if the people who lived here would recognize it.
My mom told me one time, her brothers was throwing rocks at each other but they was suppose to have sticks in a bag. My mom’s oldest brother didn’t have sticks, he had big rocks. We threw rocks in the creek and skipping smooth rocks across the water.
We did our share of throwing rocks in the ’40s and ’50s. We threw them at targets we set up, at attacking dogs, snakes, and each other. I was the recipient of one at age 4 that fractured my skull and put me in the hospital for 8 days.
Our favorite thing to chunk, though, was balloons filled with water. US 1 ran through our neighborhood. We watched a lot of WWII movies and learned to use hand signals. We would set up a ‘watch post’ about 70 yards up the road. Whenever a car with out of state tags came by, the sentry would give hand signals to prepare us. Sometimes there were as many as 5 or 6 of us chunking water balloons. Our favorite, though, was convertibles. We tossed water balloons at all convertibles with tops down. The hand signal was moving a hand over the head to show nothing covered it. Out of state convertibles with tops down were signalled using one hand then the other over the head. That was a special treat. Today, if there were any highways that still went through town instead of around it, I’m certain there would be Internet warnings about hooligans in the area.
My husband and I used to love walking the gravel bars and shore line of rivers and beaches to see what rocks we could find as, like Katie, we too were interested in lapidary. Rocks make for lovely additions to many things we use in constructions of homes and pathways, land separations or marking off garden areas. My dad used rocks and sand mixed with a cement for the foundation and the fireplace of our 2nd home when he built it; but THE ROCK is the best foundation we can build our lives on.
When Pap got ahold of Steve I bet he got a quick lesson in “ballistics”. When you throw, kick, toss, fire, or shoot something, you and you alone are responsible for any and all collateral damages that may occur from it. I got my “lesson”, one of many, from throwing dirt clods and hitting an unintended target that I remember to this day.
Joe, one of my best friends still remembers and tells about his Grandaddy whipping him when he was maybe ten years old, he laughs and says he whipped me until he got tired, rested and then whipped me some more. His crime was throwing a green cotton ball at his younger brother and hitting his grandmother in her forehead leaving her with a pump knot and a headache. Many of today’s doctors don’t understand, the only distress these whippings us older generations had from these whipping was in our butts, they did no mental harm to us. There is a difference between a whipping and abuse. When they started teaching these lessons at your butt, the lesson went straight to your head!
I’m sure my brother would have loved “rocking” since it was like pulling a prank on someone and of course he was all for that. I remember collecting a few rocks when I was young and keeping them in a shoebox. I also remember getting into trouble after throwing some rocks in our yard. There was a ditch close by our house and I had gathered some and was throwing them to see how far each one would land. Well, daddy had to cut the grass one morning and the rocks were small and of course he didn’t see them but after about the second or third bam he heard he thought something was wrong with the lawn mower, so he stopped. He soon saw what it was. He went inside the house, and he knew it wasn’t mama, so he looked at me and I fessed up to it. Needlessly to say, I didn’t throw anymore rocks in the yard. My husband taught our granddaughter how to skip rocks. We like to take her to a lake a few miles from home and she and granddaddy take turns skipping rocks. She just loves it. Was here the other day and told her granddaddy it was getting about time to go back to the lake to skip some more rocks. It’s the little things that seem to bring so much joy.
Tipper, I can’t tell you how much I have enjoyed Granny’s Q&A sessions. She is so precious and thank you for sharing her. When she talked about pedal pushers, I knew what those were because that is what I always called them.
When I was a little tyke of about three or four my cousin and I (who was 10 months younger than me) were playing in the creek in southeastern KY. We were on opposite sides of the creek, and he started throwing rocks. I don’t think he was intentionally trying to hit me, but he did. I remember crying and being put in the car and taken to the hospital. My head was shaved around the injury and a couple of sutures placed in the cut. I was fine otherwise. The area I’m talking about was rocky and hilly. Almost every spring the flood waters would rise and wash off some of the bridges and outhouses which had to be re-built. My aunts had some of the biggest rocks I ever saw come up in their yards after the waters receded. Sometimes they hauled them off to the creek but one of them was so large they left it in the yard and my aunt planted flowers around it.
When my kids were young, I would pull them out the road in their wagon to a little creek to toss in rocks. We would have a picnic sitting in the wagon and then toss in rocks till they tuckered themselves out. Hubby always entertained them by skipping rocks when we went to larger creeks or a river—he is great at it. Rocks are fun to toss in water and watch the splash, to collect, to paint and to make rock pets with—free entertainment for kids and adults alike. They make beautiful homes, chimneys, fences, and, of course, the awesome jewelry Katie creates. We have a rock chimney that will probably be standing long after we are gone.
I’ve always had a “thing” for rocks. I collect one from everywhere I go and carry ones from my homeplaces with me when I move. We have a water cascade out front for the birds and all my rocks from my travels are arranged in a specific order in the top tier. It’s been my way of blessing my new home with the memories and love from my past. I wonder if Chitter has ever seen the special rocks that are along the shores of Lake Superior called Yooperlites. They are my latest obsession. They look like plain, ol’ gray stones, but if you hit them with a form of black light, they glow a brilliant orange. I know Chitter would enjoy this YouTube post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SDVJU_B0sg&t=310s
Loved the Q&A with Granny last night, enjoyed the song video of Pap & Paul singing you linked on this blog too. Every time I see a rock I remember Katie saying how the inside of a rock is a surprise. She may have said it differently but basically that’s what I remembered. One never knows how truly a rock is until a rock is either cleaned up, polished or cut in two so it’s true beauty is exposed. I’m sure I’ve learned that from Katie.
Prayers continue for all hurricane survivors.
Don’t forget “rocking” a hornet or yellow jacket nest to get fishbait,
or “rocking” out apples when you’ve exhausted all the easy ones.
Don’t forget “rocking” dogs who try to prevent your passage on a public roadway,
or copperheads and rattlesnakes anywhere you find them.
Then there’s rocking someone’s fishing hole. It was your favorite fishing hole, but there they are all settled and calm and concentrating on their line when from behind the trees and over them comes a barrage of gravel rocks. Not intended for harm to them but only to scare the fish away and to inform them that this could happen again today.
You and Chitter together have me paying closer attention to rocks. Growing up, rocks were for ‘flip gun’ ammunition, throwing, damming the creek or looking under for fish bait. Now though I think things like ‘I bet Chitter would like that’ or ‘I wonder if Chitter can cut or polish quartz’. There are lots of rocks around here full of mica flakes so they sparkle like they are full of diamonds. And there is a ridge on Don Carter SP with quartz rocks made up of thousands of tiny quartz prisms. Ever once in a great while, there are single tiny pointed crystals. I have been thinking about the effects of Helene also. Some people’s property is actually gone. Some property is now un-usable. We know of one story where the linemen setting a new pole had to dig through 9 feet of sand to reach original ground that would support the pole. Deeds and surveys need re-done. The effects will be felt years down the road in unexpected ways. In the nature of things, not every change will be bad but still early days to be finding those.
Ernest T Bass comes to mind!
It’s hard to believe so many of those rocks, some quite large, can be unearthed and moved about by rushing water. The power of nature is awesome and frightening. But as you say Tipper, we do serve an awesome God and I pray to Him each day for those impacted by the storms and those rendering aid.
I’m interested in the word “pumpknot” — it’s new to me.
Also known as knucklebumps!
We young lads did a lot of “rockin” here in north Knoxville, Tn. ,and yes we got in trouble sometimes. Can’t remember anyone ever getting a serious injury from our rock fights.
Tipper, I haven’t heard or read “pumpknot” in 40 years or more. I’ve had a few in my time. Some were inflicted by others, some resulted from falls and bumping my head. All of them hurt.
Me too, I have had many pump knots on my head over the years, majority of them caused by me. I joke and say when I die and the undertaker sees all of the scars on me he will think “I hope he lost, I don’t want to see the other fellow if he (me) won.” I didn’t have any brothers but did have one sister. We have been known to chunk a few rocks at one another when growing up and it was not by accident. I usually wound up getting the whooping.
I have a friend that built his own house. He built a stone fireplace and mantle from rocks he pulled out of the nearby Saluda River. I have noticed it seems like you can never get all of the rocks out of a rocky field, every time the field is plowed there will be more rocks. I have saw fields where there would be rock piles along the edge of the field. There is a field across the road in front of my home known to the older neighbors as Rocky Knoll because of having so many fist size rocks.
I have always been amazed at the number of large rocks in the river that ran through Bat Cave and Chimney Rock. I wonder how much damage was done to the river by the flood. I am still praying for the people of this area and the other other areas that were so badly damaged. I read on a news station website last night where it will take years and billions of dollars for some of these areas to rebuild. Here where I live, it has not rained one drop in the 3 weeks since Helene and none is in the picture for the next week. While this is a problem for me with reseeding some spots in my yard and local farmers planting grain crops, it seems to me like God is protecting the ones that have damaged roofs to their homes. Like Granny, I have heard others around here say it is unsafe to be in the woods because of the number of trees blown over or leaning against one another. I have no idea of how many other than a lot of trees blown over in my 10 acres or more of woods.