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Transcripts: Southern Appalachian English
Fonze Cable
(Nine Mile, near Maryville, Blount County, Tennessee) was age 59 when interviewed. He was probably literate and a former logging camp cook.
Have you got it on? This here's the old residenter bear hunter, Fonze Cable. I've killed twenty-six bear. Well, I guess I've been a-huntin' something like thirty-eight year. I reckon though what makes me be such a hunter, like to hunt. My father was a bear hunter. Him and one of his nephews went a-fishin' one time, and they was up on what's called Desolation, and they had a dog with them. He'd run a bear in on them, and they got to rockin' it, and they, it got his dog down. He run in and jerked it off, and it went showing its teeth. It jumped back and went to showing its teeth at them, and he said, "Riley, knock its damn teeth out of there," and he cut down with a rock and right in the mouth he took ham, and they, they throwed rocks there, big rocks, and it wouldn't faze him. Directly he picked up him a little rock, and it took about the burr of the ear and down he fetched it. He run in there and jobbed his knife in him. The old bear jumped, and he grabbed him by the sleeve and jerked his shirt sleeve off, and this boy knocked him down again, and that time he run in, and he finished killing him that time. They killed hit with a knife and rocks. Well, I'll tell a little about myself, I was in on, well we went a-fishing, was going to go fishing and went out [on] the mountain and found where a bear had killed one of my hogs. We turned back then, and the next morning we got our dogs and started in there. These other fellows, Thomas Sparks and Asa Sparks, Bill Shuler, they went out to the mountain stand, I got down under there, and I struck him, and we run him up on, bait him on Killpecker Ridge. I crawled through the roughs and got up there to him, nearly to him, and he, he left out and went back around by the standers and then come back. He about had my dogs whupped, and I kept hollering at them and hollering at them, and directly they kept coming on towards me. One of my old dogs, he seen me and he whupped off under the hill and went to hollering. I thinks to myself I'll just slide down there and see if he'd make me holler. Down I went. I got up to about, oh I guess something like ten foot of it. There he stood. He'd look at me a while, and then he'd look up a tree a while, and then he'd turn and look off. Then he turned back on them, me a-snappin' at him with old pump shotgun. Directly the gun fired, and when it fired, he fell just the same as it'd blowed his head off. It jumped up then and come right at me with his mouth open. I jumped to try to run. I seen I couldn't, and I hollered my dog catch him, [an] old dog grabbed him by the . . .
Fellows, we was, a passel of us fellows of us gathered up here at a bear hunt. We appointed Doc Jones for the, lead the hunt. He says for us to go now, for us drivers to go to the Calhoun Ridge and start this bear, and the, John Cable and Allen Crisp. They was to go to the mule lot. Doc, he was a-goin' to the Brier Knob. Well hit, we's, Fonze Cable's the driver. He drives Bone Valley, right in on Bone Valley. There he rousted one. It come out through there, and run over Doc Jones. He was out a-kindlin' up him a fire, and it got by between him and his gun, [the] dogs went on and, it's when the standers come, the driver come on out, dogs [were] in the Devil's Courthouse fighting the bear. There we all lined up, and we hit in that Devil's Courthouse there after it. We wandered around through them roughs, and we called it lettuce beds, dark catched us in there. There we let the bear get away, and there we all come in. We're all sad, you know, and had our wood to get up after dark and all out a-pickin' up wood, camp fires. We didn't get nothing that trip.