Laney interrupted at this stage of the story with, "My mother said they used to make up a new broom and when the couple jumped over it, they was married. Then they gave the broom to the couple to use keeping house." John was evidently embarrassed. "Laney," he said, "that was never confirmed. It was just hearsay, as far as you know, and I wouldn't tell things like that.
"The first colored man I ever heard preach was old man Johnny McDowell. He married Angeline Pennon and William Scruggs, uncle to Ollie Scruggs, who lives in Athens now. After the wedding they were all dancing around the yard having a big time and enjoying the wine and feast, and old man McDowell, sitting there watching them, looked real thoughtful and sad; suddenly he said: 'They don't behave like they knew what's been done here today. Two people have been joined together for life. No matter what comes, or what happens, these two people must stand by each other, through everything, as long as they both shall live.' Never before had I had such thoughts at a wedding. They had always just been times for big eats, dancing, frolicking, and lots of jokes, and some of them pretty rough jokes, perhaps. What he said got me to thinking, and I have never been careless minded at a wedding since that day. Brother McDowell preached at Clarke's Chapel, about five miles south of Franklin, North Ca'lina, on the road leading from England to Georgia; that road ran right through the Van Hook place."
Again Laney interrupted her husband. "My mother said they even had infare dinners the next day after the wedding. The infare dinners were just for the families of the bride and groom, and the bride had a special dress for that occasion that she called her infare dress. The friends of both parties were there at the big feast on the wedding day, but not at the infare dinner."
"And there was no such a thing as child marriages heard of in those days," John was speaking again. "At least none of the brides were under 15 or 16 years old. Now you can read about child brides not more than 10 years old, 'most ever' time you pick up a paper.
"I don't remember much, about what I played until I got to be about 10 years old. I was a terrible little fellow to imitate things. Old man Tommy Angel built mills, and I built myself a little toy mill down on the branch that led to Sugar Fork River. There was plenty of nice soapstone there that was so soft you could cut it with a pocket knife and could dress it off with a plane for a nice smooth finish. I shaped two pieces of soapstone to look like round millstones and set me up a little mill that worked just fine.
"We run pretty white sand through it and called that our meal and flour. My white folks would come down to the branch and watch me run the little toy mill. I used to make toy rifles and pistols and all sorts of nice playthings out of that soapstone. I wish I had a piece of that good old soapstone from around Franklin, so I could carve some toys like I used to play with for my boy."
"We caught real salmon in the mountain streams," John remarked. "They weighed from 3 to 25 pounds, and kind of favored a jack fish, only jack fishes have duck bills, and these salmon had saw teeth. They were powerful jumpers and when you hooked one you had a fight on your hands to get it to the bank no matter whether it weighed 3 or 25 pounds. The gamest of all the fish in those mountain streams were red horses. When I was about 9 or 10 years old I took my brother's fish gig and went off down to the river. I saw what looked like the shadow of a stick in the clear water and when I thrust the gig at it I found mighty quick I had gigged a red horse. I did my best to land it but it was too strong for me and pulled loose from my gig and darted out into deep water. I ran fast as I could up the river bank to the horseshoe bend where a flat bottom boat belonging to our family was tied. I got in that boat and chased that fish 'til I got him. It weighed 6 pounds and was 2 feet and 6 inches long. There was plenty of excitement created around that plantation when the news got around that a boy, as little as I was then, had landed such a big old fighting fish."
"Suckers were plentiful and easy to catch but they did not give you the battle that a salmon or a red horse could put up and that was what it took to make fishing fun. We had canoes, but we used a plain old flat boat, a good deal like a small ferry boat, most of the time. There was about the same difference in a canoe and a flat boat that there is in a nice passenger automobile and a truck."
When asked if he remembered any of the tunes and words of the songs he sang as a child, John was silent for a few moments and then began to sing:
"A frog went courtin'
And he did ride
Uh hunh
With a sword and pistol
By his side
Uh hunh.