Welcome Bees
From:
South Carolina
Project #1655
Mrs. Genevieve W. Chandler
Murrells Inlet, S. C.
Georgetown County
FOLKLORE
VISIT WITH UNCLE WELCOME BEES--AGE 104 YEARS
The road is perfectly camouflaged from the King's Highway by wild plums
that lap overhead. Only those who have traveled this way before could
locate the 'turn in' to Uncle Welcome's house. When you have turned in
and come suddenly out from the plum thicket you find your road winding
along with cultivated patches on the left--corn and peas--a fenced-in
garden, the palings riven out by hand, and thick dark woods on the left.
A lonesome, untenanted cabin is seemingly in the way but your car swings
to the left instead of climbing the door-step and suddenly you find you
are facing a bog. The car may get through; it may not. So you switch off
and just sit a minute, seeing how the land lies. A great singing and
chopping of wood off to the left have kept the inmates from hearing the
approach of a car. When you rap therefore you hear, 'Come in'.
A narrow hall runs through to the back porch and off this hall on your
right opens a door from beyond which comes a very musical squeaking--you
know a rocking chair is going hard--even before you see it in motion
with a fuzzy little head that rests on someone's shoulder sticking over
the top. And the fuzzy head which in size is like a small five-cent
cocoanut, belongs to Uncle Welcome's great-grand. On seeing a visitor
the grand, the mother of the infant, rises and smiles greeting, and,
learning your errand, points back to the kitchen to show where Uncle
Welcome sits. You step down one step and ask him if you may come in and
he pats a chair by his side. The old man isn't so spry as he was when
you saw him in the fall; the winter has been hard. But here it is warm
again and at most four in the April afternoon, he sits over his plate of
hopping John--he and innumerable flies. At his feet, fairly under the
front of a small iron stove, sits another great-grand with a plate of
peas between her legs. Peas and rice, 'hopping John'. (Someone says peas
and hominy cooked together makes "limping Lizzie in the Low-Country."
But that is another story.)
* * * * *
"Uncle Welcome, isn't Uncle Jeemes Stuart the oldest liver on Sandy
Island?" Welcome: "Jeemes Stuart? I was married man when he born. Jeemes
rice-field. (Worker in rice-field) posed himself. In all kinds of
weather. Cut you down, down, down. Jeemes second wife gal been married
before but her husband dead.
"I couldn't tell the date or time I born. Your Maussa (Master) take it
down. When I been marry, Dr. Ward Fadder (Father) aint been marry yet.
My mother had twelve head born Oatland. He bought my mother from
Virginia. Dolly. Sam her husband name. Sam come from same course. When
my mother been bought, her been young woman. Work in rice. Plow right
now (Meaning April is time to plow rice fields). I do carpenter work and
mind horse for plantation. Come from Georgetown in boat. Have you own
carriage. Go anywhere you want to go. Oatland church build for colored
people and po-buckra. I helped build that church. The boss man, Mr.
Bettman. My son Isaac sixty-nine. If him sixty-nine, I one hundred four.
That's my record. Maussa didn't low you to marry till you twenty-two.
Ben Allston own Turkey Hill. When him dead, I was twelve years old. Me!
(Knocking his chest)"
Welcome Bees--
Parkersville, S. C.
(Near Waverly Mills, S. C.)
Age 104.
Next:
Anne Bell
Previous:
Millie Bates
