Granddad blogging: ghost story

Last week in granddad blogging, my grandfather described how his family began to get out of hard times by raising tobacco. This week he recounts a ghost story that he told us grandchildren when we were little.

Uncle Ben used to set out there under the shade tree in a swing with that sharp knife and a cedar stick and he had a lot of ‘em, and he’d whittle and whittle and whittle, shavings would pile up all around him. People riding up and down all around the road would stop and say “Ben, what in the world you doing?” “Cuttin’ timber.” That was the stock answer that he gave him. And that tree was right beside my grandmother’s house where Uncle Ben and daddy were raised. And that’s where the ghost story came in.

[Uncle Ben occasionally actually whittled some thing. I have a child sized rolling pin in cedar that he made me. It's a crude rendering, but one of my prized posessions.]

Daddy had gone somewhere, I don’t know where to see a girl somewhere I guess. I don’t know where he’d gone. But it was along in August, September. Moon was full. And he was coming back home and it was getting late and there was a fence row that had grown up on one side of the road. And it was on the east side, ‘cause he was looking up at the moon, and when he looked up he saw something white floatin on top of that fence row.

Well, it scared him, he didn’t know what it was. So, he decided that he’d kick his horse up and move a little faster on down the road. Well this thing on top of the fence row, it moved up faster, too and kept right up with him. And he thought, well, I’ll slow down and see what happens.

So he slowed down and this ball of a thing up on top of the fence row it continued to slow down and go right along with him. And he decided well I’m gonna get home, so he kicked his horse and kicked off and here that thing was floatin’ on top of the fence row right along beside him.

Finally, the fence row ran out and an old grey mule trotted out. And with its head throwed up in the air it was just the right height for that fence row to make it look like there was something floatin’ on top of it. And that’s the story of the old mule.

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T-tags: oral history, Tennessee, Wilson County, mules, whittling, ghost