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One of Bobby's favorite things was telling old "haint" and booger tales. For years, he had an artist in residence gig where he would travel to different school districts where he would both perform for kids, and also help them to uncover their own family and community stories and folkways. He is often associated with learning old love songs and stories from Appalachia, but Bobby learned such things from all over North Carolina through that program. The following document was written by Bobby on his google drive and shared with me by Luke Hoilman after Bobby's passing. I don't know what Bobby's plans were for "Boogers and Haints," but I wanted to put it up here where it might continue to entertate and edutain.
I reckon you know this if you have found your way here, but a haint is generally a term used to describe a malicious ghost, and booger is a catchall phrase for anything monstrous that goes bump in the night. --Wm. |
From the Bobby McMillon Collection at Mars Hill U.
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Boogers and Beasties
Throughout the course of my life I’ve noticed something that has always had a profound effect on my way of thinking about the world, and, I believe, on many others from my part of the country. Not, by any means everyone, but many. And that would be the influence that the supernatural has on a great number of us southerners. To some the very word “supernatural” means things that are impossible, but the people I grew up around pretty much took it all in stride. You don’t go through life particularly expecting unexplainable things to happen, but if they do “com se com sa” or “se la vie”. You deal with things when they happen.
My world has been one full of wonders such as boogers (not the nasally kind),haints, witches, wolves, giant rabbits, signs, omens, conjure doctors, cures and many other things that make a beautiful and sometimes dark tapestry of life.
It all started when I was a little feller about three years old. I was with my mama at the store my grandparents ran. My daddy was gone somewhere that night and mama and I were staying at Nanny and PawPaw’s in one of two upstairs bedrooms. It was the one that faced the side parking lot of the store. Now, it wasn’t a modern parking lot like we have nowadays, just a small dirt space between the store building and the Blue Creek Road that cut across the mountain from the main Highway 18 which ran in front of the store on its way from Lenoir to Wilkesboro. The season was summer and the windows were up. In most of the homes then that I grew up around there were very few if any light switches. When you went in a room there would be a string by the light bulb to pull to put on the light. We generally had a flashlight to get through the dark to a light string. Anyway, as I was pulling off my clothes getting ready to get in bed I happened to face the window. As I recall Mama had her back to the window at that moment and I saw it pushing against the screen. I thought the screen would come out of the window frame and either with my ears or inside my head I thought I could hear it growling. I hollered for mama and she turned around to see what my trouble was. I think she turned before it left and perhaps caught a sight of it, but maybe not. She didn’t go after PawPaw or call for him and made me go ahead and jump into bed. There were no such a thing as night lights in those days so the darkness outside was total. The shape that I saw was like some hairy beast but I couldn’t figure out how it could have been in the window to start with as it was about twelve feet above the ground outside. I finally went to sleep and the first thing I did next morning when I got up was to run out the door and look around the corner of the store building to see just how high it was to the window.
Years later daddy told me that before he met mama he used to drive a bus from Lenoir to Kings Creek and when he’d get through with his route at night he’d park it there at the store and walk home up the Blue Creek road which was about a mile. The store sat on level ground near the junction of a branch that came out of a hollow of the mountain of which on the other side Blue Creek itself flows and Lower Creek. The road runs pretty much straight for a quarter mile until it becomes very curvy before crossing the mountain. One night he was about a couple hundred yards up the road near where Mr. Gordon Broyhills drive turned right when he bumped into something. He said he reckoned it was a cow, but I don’t believe he really thought it was. For one thing, there was no cow pasture near where he had his bump, and for another, the cow didn’t move or make a sound when he ran into it unless it grunted.
One time when I was about three I rode across the hill from my grandpaw McMillons with daddy and my uncle Garland Kirby to Mr. Boughmans (pronounced Bammon) for a visit. It was on a dirt road--most all the roads back then unless they were state highways were gravel--that crossed the hill and then down the other side through woods. As we went down through the woods I looked out the car window on the passenger side where I was sitting and there, by the side of the road sat three giant rabbits with big eyes looking right at me. I don’t guess Pap or Garland saw what I did. If they did they said nothing, so I said nothing either, but I felt somehow that they had malicious thoughts. As if a hare consciously thought such things. I recollect fidgeting the whole time we were there. The first time I remember having the fidgets.
Daddy and mama and me lived in an old weatherboarded house for a time down the creek from Grandpaw and Mawmaws. It was an owned by George and Artie Icenhour; I think it was his original homeplace. George and Artie lived in a two story white home just up the bank about fifty yards away. The paint had all peeled away from the boards by the time we lived there. A lot of houses were like that then. There was no bathroom in it so you had to go out of doors to the toilet. Fortunately being so young I got out of that deal while we lived there. I always hated johnny houses because they generally stank and there were granddaddy spiders, dirt dobbers (daub), and other nasty creturs (creatures) in them. Plus, I had a dreadful fear that a snake would be hiding under the hole ready to strike at my little ass.
I was always a talker. Nanny later told me that I talked months before I learned to walk.
She said that mama would’ve let me lay til I was grown if she hadn’t of taught me how to walk. And active too. They had to watch me every minute to keep me from running up the road when we were at the store which I did. I got loose one day and was halfway up the road before they caught me. Those tricks may have stopped when a billie goat of Miss (Mrs) Broyhills got loose and ran inside the store chasing folks all over the place including me. Another time I took off up to George Icenhours and one of his roosters decided the place wasn’t big enough for us both and chased me all the way back to the house. I might’ve learned to get still but not so my tongue. Peggy Broyhill had a name for being a big talker but PawPaw told me one time that Peggy couldn’t hold a light for me to see by.
When we lived in the Icenhour house I would always holler “Come in!” if there was a knock at the door. I said that one time too many once and mama said “You’re going to say that some time and the Boogerman’s .a gonna come in!” I didn’t say that anymore. The Boogerman was the Devil as opposed to a booger which could be anything from a poltergeist to a Bigfoot.
It was cold that winter and I remember waking up one morning and the snow had fallen knee deep. I looked out the window and mama was out there in it and had made a snowman about as tall as she was. I was tickled to death to see it. I never could make one to suit me like that one did that my mama made.
.
You had to go down a little hill to cross the creek to get to the Blue Creek road which we came in and out of to go somewhere. The woods lined up on the far side of the road but you could see the road itself for a good long ways. I don’t remember the incident but mama said i looked out one day and saw Nanny and PawPaw coming to visit us and got so excited I ran out to meet them. I guess my eyes were on their car a coming and in my rush I followed my eye sight rather than the drive and ran smack into the weeds and blackberry bushes that grew between managing to scratch myself half to death.
Another time Nanny was at the house and she and mama were getting me ready to go to their home at Lunday. It always excited me to get to go there because that was always what I felt like was home. PawPaw was closing up the store down at the highway and going to come pick us up. I was sitting on a chair where I was getting my pants put on and Nanny was trying to show me how to snap my my thumb and second finger together. I could see out the window and saw PawPaw coming down the road in his 1950 blue Chevrolet car to get us. So I got in a hurry to figure out how to snap them before he got there so I could show him the trick I’d learned and nearly fell off the chair in doing so. But I got it. I was grinning from ear to ear when he got there so I could show him what I’d just learned. I wanted him to be proud of me. I’ve thought about things like that many of a time. Mama and daddy were always around; maybe that’s why I just took them for granted, but Nanny and PawPaw were so special it thrilled my heart whenever I was around them and I was around them a lot. Daddy and mama were somehow distant. I loved them just fine but it was different. I don’t know if I could explain it yet.
My world has been one full of wonders such as boogers (not the nasally kind),haints, witches, wolves, giant rabbits, signs, omens, conjure doctors, cures and many other things that make a beautiful and sometimes dark tapestry of life.
It all started when I was a little feller about three years old. I was with my mama at the store my grandparents ran. My daddy was gone somewhere that night and mama and I were staying at Nanny and PawPaw’s in one of two upstairs bedrooms. It was the one that faced the side parking lot of the store. Now, it wasn’t a modern parking lot like we have nowadays, just a small dirt space between the store building and the Blue Creek Road that cut across the mountain from the main Highway 18 which ran in front of the store on its way from Lenoir to Wilkesboro. The season was summer and the windows were up. In most of the homes then that I grew up around there were very few if any light switches. When you went in a room there would be a string by the light bulb to pull to put on the light. We generally had a flashlight to get through the dark to a light string. Anyway, as I was pulling off my clothes getting ready to get in bed I happened to face the window. As I recall Mama had her back to the window at that moment and I saw it pushing against the screen. I thought the screen would come out of the window frame and either with my ears or inside my head I thought I could hear it growling. I hollered for mama and she turned around to see what my trouble was. I think she turned before it left and perhaps caught a sight of it, but maybe not. She didn’t go after PawPaw or call for him and made me go ahead and jump into bed. There were no such a thing as night lights in those days so the darkness outside was total. The shape that I saw was like some hairy beast but I couldn’t figure out how it could have been in the window to start with as it was about twelve feet above the ground outside. I finally went to sleep and the first thing I did next morning when I got up was to run out the door and look around the corner of the store building to see just how high it was to the window.
Years later daddy told me that before he met mama he used to drive a bus from Lenoir to Kings Creek and when he’d get through with his route at night he’d park it there at the store and walk home up the Blue Creek road which was about a mile. The store sat on level ground near the junction of a branch that came out of a hollow of the mountain of which on the other side Blue Creek itself flows and Lower Creek. The road runs pretty much straight for a quarter mile until it becomes very curvy before crossing the mountain. One night he was about a couple hundred yards up the road near where Mr. Gordon Broyhills drive turned right when he bumped into something. He said he reckoned it was a cow, but I don’t believe he really thought it was. For one thing, there was no cow pasture near where he had his bump, and for another, the cow didn’t move or make a sound when he ran into it unless it grunted.
One time when I was about three I rode across the hill from my grandpaw McMillons with daddy and my uncle Garland Kirby to Mr. Boughmans (pronounced Bammon) for a visit. It was on a dirt road--most all the roads back then unless they were state highways were gravel--that crossed the hill and then down the other side through woods. As we went down through the woods I looked out the car window on the passenger side where I was sitting and there, by the side of the road sat three giant rabbits with big eyes looking right at me. I don’t guess Pap or Garland saw what I did. If they did they said nothing, so I said nothing either, but I felt somehow that they had malicious thoughts. As if a hare consciously thought such things. I recollect fidgeting the whole time we were there. The first time I remember having the fidgets.
Daddy and mama and me lived in an old weatherboarded house for a time down the creek from Grandpaw and Mawmaws. It was an owned by George and Artie Icenhour; I think it was his original homeplace. George and Artie lived in a two story white home just up the bank about fifty yards away. The paint had all peeled away from the boards by the time we lived there. A lot of houses were like that then. There was no bathroom in it so you had to go out of doors to the toilet. Fortunately being so young I got out of that deal while we lived there. I always hated johnny houses because they generally stank and there were granddaddy spiders, dirt dobbers (daub), and other nasty creturs (creatures) in them. Plus, I had a dreadful fear that a snake would be hiding under the hole ready to strike at my little ass.
I was always a talker. Nanny later told me that I talked months before I learned to walk.
She said that mama would’ve let me lay til I was grown if she hadn’t of taught me how to walk. And active too. They had to watch me every minute to keep me from running up the road when we were at the store which I did. I got loose one day and was halfway up the road before they caught me. Those tricks may have stopped when a billie goat of Miss (Mrs) Broyhills got loose and ran inside the store chasing folks all over the place including me. Another time I took off up to George Icenhours and one of his roosters decided the place wasn’t big enough for us both and chased me all the way back to the house. I might’ve learned to get still but not so my tongue. Peggy Broyhill had a name for being a big talker but PawPaw told me one time that Peggy couldn’t hold a light for me to see by.
When we lived in the Icenhour house I would always holler “Come in!” if there was a knock at the door. I said that one time too many once and mama said “You’re going to say that some time and the Boogerman’s .a gonna come in!” I didn’t say that anymore. The Boogerman was the Devil as opposed to a booger which could be anything from a poltergeist to a Bigfoot.
It was cold that winter and I remember waking up one morning and the snow had fallen knee deep. I looked out the window and mama was out there in it and had made a snowman about as tall as she was. I was tickled to death to see it. I never could make one to suit me like that one did that my mama made.
.
You had to go down a little hill to cross the creek to get to the Blue Creek road which we came in and out of to go somewhere. The woods lined up on the far side of the road but you could see the road itself for a good long ways. I don’t remember the incident but mama said i looked out one day and saw Nanny and PawPaw coming to visit us and got so excited I ran out to meet them. I guess my eyes were on their car a coming and in my rush I followed my eye sight rather than the drive and ran smack into the weeds and blackberry bushes that grew between managing to scratch myself half to death.
Another time Nanny was at the house and she and mama were getting me ready to go to their home at Lunday. It always excited me to get to go there because that was always what I felt like was home. PawPaw was closing up the store down at the highway and going to come pick us up. I was sitting on a chair where I was getting my pants put on and Nanny was trying to show me how to snap my my thumb and second finger together. I could see out the window and saw PawPaw coming down the road in his 1950 blue Chevrolet car to get us. So I got in a hurry to figure out how to snap them before he got there so I could show him the trick I’d learned and nearly fell off the chair in doing so. But I got it. I was grinning from ear to ear when he got there so I could show him what I’d just learned. I wanted him to be proud of me. I’ve thought about things like that many of a time. Mama and daddy were always around; maybe that’s why I just took them for granted, but Nanny and PawPaw were so special it thrilled my heart whenever I was around them and I was around them a lot. Daddy and mama were somehow distant. I loved them just fine but it was different. I don’t know if I could explain it yet.