SpiritHawk, got me to thinking about things that happened when I was growing up in the rural Tennessee hills.
My Grandfather Williams took me to the store with him, most days he went there. The old General Store, where the harness for mules and horses was hanging from the walkway around the second floor. The second floor was only about 10 feet wide up there and went all the way around the building. An old pot Belly stove sat in the middle of the building, with chairs around it. In the winter men would gather around the stove and play dominos, or just talk and visit. During the summer the men would gather on the porch outside and do the same things, talk about the weather, crops, and livestock. And play Dominos.
One summer day the men were playing Dominos, and a bunch of us boys was playing around. I was about 7 or 8. We would run up a stack of feed bags and jump off the end and go rolling out across the grass. The old Country Doctor was sitting there playing dominos and he yelled at us to "Quite that, before one of you boys gets hurt". We stopped for a while then slowly we went back to doing the same thing. Then one of the Kemp boys slipped and fell. In falling, he hit a spike sticking out where a board had come loose and was missing. Blood was flowing, and he was screaming. The Old Doc got mad. Now you have to realize this ole man was held in great reverance in the community. He had birthed most men on the porch, along with their wives, and all their kids. He had at one time or another patched up every body there. Broken bones, cuts, and illnesses. Doc seldom got mad or flustered, but this time he got mad, something these men was not used to seeing.
Doc got up and was yelling about how he had told us someone was going to get hurt. He yelled for us all to line up, facing the road. Doc picked up a wooden slat from the coal bin. He yelled for us to all bend over, and if one of us moved we'd get even more. Then he went down the row and smacked each one of us on the rear and told us to sit down. That hurt worse than the smack. We all squirmed. Then Doc grabbed the Kemp boy, ripped his pants down to his knees to expose the cut cheek, and threw him across the stack of feed bags. Doc sat on the kid and opened his bag. Pulling out some antiseptic from his bag he swabbed the cut. Then he pulled out a needle and thread. Doc stitched up the cut, taking about eight stitches. The Kemp boy screamerd each time he stuck the needle in, and was crying nonstop. Old Doc just kept telling him he did not care that it hurt, he had been told not to do that and this was his punishment.
No one interfeered, they all felt like Doc, the boy should have listened. Later heard Doc had done things like that in the past. Seems he had to teach every generation to listen. When he had finished he told the kid that under normal conditions he would have given him something to kill the pain of the stitching. But since he was hardheaded and refused to listen he diserved the pain. Maybe this will teach you a lession.
Interesting Childhood. Gives more meaning to the term, Round The Old Pot Bellied Stove.
