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NAME OF aORKER
ADDRESS
DATE
SUBJECT
NAME AD ADDaESS OF INFORMANT
STATE MASSACHUSETTS
ROBERT WILDER
NORTHFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
JANUARY 13, 1939
LIVING LORE
G. 0. DUNNELL, NORTHFIELD
MASSACHUSETTS
Mr Dunnell was sitting beside the stove in his
little office shack near the railroad tracks in
Northfield when we dropped in for a chat. The
day was raw with a film of snow in the air, but
the shack was warm and cosy. Mr Dunnell was in
a reflective mood musing over his wifeis insis-
tence that they take a vacation and go down to
"Floridyn for a few weeks. They have been to
Florida several times in the years since "the
children grew upl4Mr Dunnell was apparently at-
tempting to marshal some arguments to override
his wife's persistence; secretly there was no
doubt he was as anxious as she to be off.
In relating his experiences on previous trips
to Florida we noticed Mr Dunnel spoke of coming
home through "Georgia, Alabama and Michigan". We
started to correct this geographic blunder, but
Mr Dunnell paid no heed so we let it go ---Mr
Dunnell came home from Florida through "Georgia,
Alabama and Michigan."
A few days after this interview, we heard that
Mr Dunnell had left town for a vacation-- in
Florida.
Name: Robert Wilder
Title: Living Lore
Assignment: Northfield
Topic: G. 0. Dunnell the Yankee
Merchant
"Dunno but I'll take a couple of weeks off and go to Floridy,"
said Mr. Dunnell as he charged his pipe with a coaly thumb. Most
people have got their coal. 'Course there's grain. But the fertilizer
business won't start up for some time yet. And I guess the help will
be able to bear up if I ain't around. Mebbe it'd be a sort of vacation
for them, too.
After waiting for a freight train to clank by, he continued,
"Don't know why I want to go to Floridy. I been there a couple of
times already. And it's a long trip by automobile. Leon's been down
there four or five times and knows his way around pretty good, Knows
what roads to take and all that.
"Last time we went we went over four hundred miles the first
day. We started out or here about nine o'clock on Sunday morning and
spent that night down in Delaware. We cooked up some chickens and
some pies and made sandwiches that we done up in some of this waxed
paper. Funny thing, but you'd think sandwiches would dry up in time.
But they didn't. Two weeks later we was eating them sandwiches and
they was nice and soft and seemed as good as ever.
To my exclamation of protest, Mr. Dunnell wagged his head
and declared with a twinkle: "Don't believe me, eh! Well they did
and that's a fact, believe it or not.
"One trouble of riding off in an automobile is that a feller
doesn't get exercise enough. Although the first time I went to
Floridy I got plenty, for I tried to see both sides of the road at
(2)
Name: Robert Wilder
Title: Living Lore
Assignment: Northfield
Topic: G. 0. Dunnell the Yankee
Merchant
once. I kept turning and twisting trying to see things, bu ext time
I didn't care so much. And a feller can't digest his food right if he
don't exercise.
"Way I did it, I'd get up early every morning before we started
off. Maybe I walked four or five miles just round and back for I had
to look out I didn't get lost. The country looks pretty much all alike.
Hail! One morning there was some folks that stayed at the same tvurist
house we did, folks from the North they was, travelling to Floridy
just like us. Kinder fussy people. Must have an early start. The
folks that owned the place had to be sure and wake 'em up good add early
and have breakfast ready and I don't know what all. Way we did was to
drive fifty or hundred miles before we stopped for breakfast. But that
wasn't the way these people done things. I got up and went out walking.
I see their car was gone and supposed they was pretty well on their
way to 21oridy, when I saw a car coming down the street that looked a
good deal like theirs. I looked at it close and there they was in it.
They seen me and both their mouths popped open. They stopped and
asked me how I got way down where I was so quick. I didn't know what
they meant. Told 'em I just walked out to stretch my legs before
cramping 'em up in the car. 'But your car was there when we left,'
they said. I tumbled to what the matter was, so I asked 'em when they
1ft. They told me, and I pulled out my watch and figgered they had been
driving thirty or forty miles. 'What town is this?' they wanted to
know. I told 'em it was the place where they spent last night, and you
(3)
Name: Robert gilder
Title: Living Lore
Assignment: Northfield
Topic: G. 0. Dunnell the Yankee
Merchant
should a -seen their faces. Wouldn't believe me 'till T got in and rode
back with 'em to where our automchbile was. Then you ought to have
heard 'em take on. All about the time and the gas and the early start
wasted. And how they'd gone in a circle and didn't know where they went.
"Funny about folks when they get down to Floridy. Bunch of old
fools anyway, or they wouldn't be loafing around all winter claiming
they could afford it because they didn't have to pay coal bills. And
claiming they was keeping warm: By God, when that sun goes down it's
so clamed cold and damp that a coal fire like this one here would feel
goon. But they don't have no coal stoves, no. Some of the shacks
they call cottages have fire places. But wood costs more'n coal does to
home.
"Some of these people that talk big about spending their winters
in Floridy live four or five in a room in a shack, I guess. An' the
women do their own cooking, too. But you don't hear nothing about that.
Cook on an oil stove, so's not to spend no money for coal, too.
"My sister has a place at Crescent City near in the middle
of Floridy. She and her folks live there all the year 'round, She
built a house out of white brick trimmed with red. What she wanted
such a big house for, I don't know.
"No, she don't take winter boarders. They raise oranges and
grape fruit and everything they is, I guess. I know I could lean out
my bedroom winder and pick all the tangerines I wanted right off the
trees. They're lucky where they are, the frosts don't seem to hit 'em.
(4)
Name: Robert Wilder
Title: Livinw Lore
Assignment: Northfield
Topic: G. Q. Dunnell the Yankee
Merchant
Some folks try to tell yer that frosts are unusual in Floridy. I don't
believe it. When I've been down there I've seen the ground kinder
laid out in strips. A strip several rods wide, or maybe a mile, all
white. Then would come a green place. Then another white one. Maybe
it's unusual to have it snow real hard, but I bet they get a scattering
of it every winter. They read in the papers of how they's a blizzard
up north, and they go 'round and shake hands with each other that they've
missed it. They don't stop to figger that most of us up here keeps
reasonably warm, blizzard or no blizzard, while down there they have the
shakes every evening. Most of those old coots that come down from
the north won't touch no liquor. But they swill patent medicine that
stanus off the shakes. Shucks, it's nothing but damned poor whisky,
and awful tasting at that. Costs two or three times as much, too.
"If they hear of somebody from the part of the north they come
from, or of someone who's related to someone they know, they'll drive
a couple a hundred miles to slobber on 'em. And up here they wouldn't
walk across the street to pass the time of day with 'em.
"Coming back this last time we come home over the mountain
N5s,
road. We went through Georgia and Alabama and part of Michigan, then
through Tennesse and so on home. We saw the work the Government is doing
down there.
"I liked Alabama. It's farming country. And you get up on a
hill and look off, and you see hills that look like little haystacks.
They're round hills that come most to a point. And they're planted
with corn clear to the ton. Make you wonder how the fellers ever done
it. Must a -had to a -ploughed it on a spiral.
(6)
iame: Robert Wilder
Title: Living Lore
Assignment: Northfield
Topic: G. 0. alnnell the Yankee
Merchant
went right down to the river. I had to get my twenty-eight foot
ladder. And I had to go to the bank side and put a rbck under one side
of the ladder to make it even. Then I took my basket and climbed up.
The ladder shook a little, so I looked down to see if itmes slipping off
the rock. My eye caught the river that looked far enough below me so
I felt I was hanging on to the side of the Washington Monument. I
grabbed my basket, threw my arms around the ladder and hung on, with
my knees shaking enough to have shook all the applep off the tree.
Finally, I managed to open my eyes and look up. I saw all these nice
apples. Then I had to look down again. This time I dropped my basket,
shut my eyes, and begun edging down the ladder with its rungs scraping
my belly. Seemed like an hour before I finally got down. And my knees
was shaking so's I could hardly stand up. I made up my mind that I
didn't want them apples after all. The cattle could eat 'em after they
fell off the tree.
"Guess I have a lot of fun picking apples. Once I see a dog
kill a wild cat. Wouldiat think they could do it, would yer? I told
my hired man to begin picking apples along the stone wall on the far
side of my pasture, and that I would salt the cattle on the near aide
to keep 'em away from him. We had a dog we'd inherited when the old
folks died. He wan't no good, but we didn't dast kill him, because
the neighbors might talk. He was a fair coon dog, though, and he liked
to hunt. But he wan't fierce. Any stranger could come and walk off
with the place for all he cared. He'd just wag his tail, and not even
(7)
Fame: Robert Wilder
Title: Living Lore
Assignment: Nortaield
Topic: G. O. Dunnell the Yankee
UercAnt
bark wouldn't hurt nothing.
"Well, just as we was about to start out, we heard that dog
bellerin'. Next thing we knew, a wild cat come bounding out of the brush
making for a tree with the dog just behind him. The tree he made for
was an ash. It was an open land tree sols the branches come down pretty
low. The cat got up in that and the dog tried to climb up after him.
'Course he couldn't so he started running 'round and 'round the tree.
The cat was up on a limb watching him.
"Gosh,' I says,II bet that cat come from One of those trees
that you was going to pick! The hired man says, 'Them things ain't
dangerous. I ain't afraid of 'em.'
4Mebbe, you just soon climb up in that tree and ;ahake him off,
so's the dog can get him,' I says. I didn't thin 4 he would, you know.
I was just teasing him.
"ture: he says, and starts climbing the tree. The cat
crawled 'way out on a limb. And I begun to wonder what tree I was goin'
to climb before he got shook off. They wan't no other trees near.
And I didn't like to give in I was scared. I liggered mebbe the hired
man wan't so dumb climbing the tree. It was a darn -sight safer.
"However, I didn't get no chance to do nothing. The cat
jumped out of that tree. And, by jinks, that dog grabbed it right by
the back in the air. He didn't let it get any of its feet on the
ground, just whirled around on his hind legs, like a whirling dervish,
or somethint and by and by he dropped it and got a -hold on its throat
real quick finished him. uosh! I was thunderstruck. But the hired
man said, 'Pshaw, 't wan't nothing.'
(8)
Name: Robert gilder
Title: Living Lore
Assignment: pbrthfield
Topic: G. 0. Dunnell the Yankee
Merchant
"There was a time when we got most rid of the wild cats. They
raised Cain with a feller's chickens you know and we tried to kill
them off as fast as we could. The town still offers a baanty of ten
dollars for each scalp. We was gittin rid of the wild cats by
killing off the deer but then some of them hunting fellers must have
the deer to shoot at, so we get the deer back and the wild cats and
catamounts and everything.
"But people ain't so afraid of the wild cats as they used to
be in the days when they drove horses. Then the wild cats would jump
on the horses or run across in front of 'em and scare 'em most to
death. Now people drive the automobilesand just kill the wild cats
off at one clip. I wouldn't be surprised if the autos didn't kill
off the wild cats bettern than anythin else."
Just at this moment a snow plow went slowly down the road
beyond Mr. Dunnell's hay, grainend fertilizer shack. There was only
a thin film of snow across the fields, but evidentally Northfield's
highway commissioner was getting prepared for what might come.
"People certainly don't know how lucky they are these days
to get their streets cleared up nice and tidy first thing after
a snow storm," Mr. Dunnell pulled thoughtfully on his grimy pipe,
"In the old days, and they weren't long ago either, we didn't get any
town help at all. It was each man for himself. First, the feller that
lived farthest up the road would start out with a yoke of oxen and a bob
sled, with a plow each side of the runners, so's to push the snow back
farther than the runners would alone. This feller would flounder through
(9)
Name: Robert Wilder
Title: Living Lore
Assignment: Northfield
Topic: G. 0. Dunnell the Yankee
Merchant
the drifts with his oxen till he reached the next house. The feller
there wolitl probably hook up another yoke of oxen and start along with
his shovel. They'd pick up everybody on the road, and each would make
a round trip. That give us a road that so took us across the fields
sometimes to get away from the hollers where the snow drifted back in
no time. We'd never heard of snow fences in them days. Course there
was only room for one sleigh but you didn't often meet anybody. When
you aic6 the feller comm n down hill had to unhitch and get his team past.
Then he naa to boast his sleigh up on the bank and let the other feller
by, then hitch up again. Nobody really minded. It was kind of sociable
like the other feller usually helped and you had time for a little
gossip. Sometimes they built turnouts where you could turn in and let
the other feller by, if you saw him coming. We didn't have no turnout
on our road, except sometimes the fellers would dig one rather than
unhitch.
"Nowadays folks will holier if the plows don't keep goin all
night, so's they can drive out comfortable in the =ming. Beats all haw
times changes IMO and people."R"Have to expect that," was our feeble
rejoinder. "You better go to Florida, they don't expect the towns to
spend money plowing roads down there.
Mr. Dunnell looked sharply out the window where his son was
loading a truck.
"Well, don't say nothin to the folks about it because I'm sorta
stallin right now, but I guess I'll be truckin for Floridy before long."